


Cosmic Vision

by rymyanna



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Developing Relationship, Emotional Constipation, Family Dynamics, M/M, Magic, Manipulation, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Sexual Content, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-06-03 22:04:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 43,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19473109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rymyanna/pseuds/rymyanna
Summary: In an alternate future Katolis, King was more of a ceremonial title, and for Viren it meant that being the King’s Advisor was more of a PR job. His work kept him from regular magic practice, along with several other activities. Claudia got him a gift card to a fortune teller for his birthday, and at Cosmic Vision, a surprisingly non-shady little establishment, he met Aaravos and got inevitably drawn into the elf’s orbit.(Modern day AU with magic, elves, and dragons.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fandom has me by the throat, but like, in a good way.   
> I'm looking for a beta reader for this, so if you're interested or know someone who is, message me (I'm also rymyanna on the social medias) or just comment here and we'll figure something out. You can also comment for any other reason.   
> It's not rated because I haven't decided if there's a reason to rate this higher than T, but for now you can safely assume that the rating is T for at least the first five chapters.   
> Updates happen once a week (probably on the weekends).

It was early summer. Viren has been in his home office all day, working on a speech for Harrow. King was more of a ceremonial position, these days, but that didn’t mean the monarch couldn’t still sway the masses, with the right words. When he deemed the draft good enough, he stepped outside his work space for a break, and was ambushed by his children and Harrow. 

“Surprise!” 

When he didn’t react right away, Soren jumped in with, “It’s your birthday!”

“Oh, yes, that.” It was a tradition for him to forget. “Harrow, since you’re here, I sent you the speech.”

Harrow smiled and pat him on the back to get him the rest of the way through the door. “Don’t worry about that right now. It’s time to celebrate and I only have limited time before I need to get going.”

“Yes, for your speech.”

His boss frowned at him. “I already approved the third draft, I don’t see how-”

Claudia interrupted them, ”Please, please can you not talk about work for once?”

Harrow switched tracks, “This whole thing would be a lot less of a hassle if you still lived at the castle.”

“You may be right,” Viren allowed, forcing a smile. Life at the castle hadn’t been the same since the accident, so he had relocated his family to the suburbs in the better part of town. The friendship between Harrow and him wasn’t as it once was, but he’d be damned if he let their professional relationship deteriorate as well. 

“Okay, time for party hats and finger food, come on!” Soren cheered, a little too loudly, exchanging looks with Claudia. Viren felt out of the loop and also silly in his bright cone shaped hat.

They relocated from the upstairs hallway to the living room.

“Dad, we got you this tie and tie pin,” his son handed him the present. 

“You’re not supposed to just tell him what it is,” Claudia scolded her brother and turned a smile on her father. “But it is from both me and Soren.”

“Thank you, Claudia, and Soren,” he said, unwrapping it before placing the contents on the nearest table. 

“And I,” Harrow stepped up, “Bring you the gift of my presence.”

Viren looked on with skepticism.

“Also, this book.”

The large book had a ribbon around it so he could see the title as he accepted it.  _ The Collected Histories of The Xadia-Human Kingdoms Divide _ . The title could be more snappy, but it was about his favorite time period, and he was pleased that Harrow remembered. “This is great, thank you.”

“I hear that one even has some elf historians pitching in,” Harrow said with a grin. 

Viren smiled at the book. “You hear right.”

The sound of a car honking on the driveway put an end to the festivities. The head of Harrow’s security team, Amaya, came in to pick up the king. She nodded at Viren, smiled at the kids. 

“Well, I must be off,” Harrow excused himself.

“Are you sure I shouldn’t come with you?” Viren checked before his friend could run.

“It’s your birthday, no more work, King’s orders.” He winked, said bye to Claudia and Soren, and disappeared into the black car with Amaya. There was a quiet moment as Viren and his kids watched the car drive behind a bend.

“I guess that was it?” Soren broke the silence.

“Actually,” Claudia snapped her fingers. “I have one more thing for you, dad.” She ran over to the couch to dig through her bag.

“Oh no, Clauds, I thought you were kidding,” Soren wailed. He turned to his father with a serious look, “I had nothing to do with this one,” and left.

Viren felt a stab of dread, but it subsided when the thing Claudia brought to him just looked like a coupon or a gift card. 

It read:  _ Access the Vast and Timeless Power of the Cosmos! Get a glimpse into your Future! Gaze into the Beyond with a Professional! _

“That sounds a bit over dramatic,” Viren muttered, loud enough for Claudia to hear.

“It’s the right amount of dramatic, dad! When I went with my friends, he told me there’d be a death in the family, and look what happened!” She grabbed one of her succulents from the windowsill and held it up. It looked brown in ways Viren guessed wasn’t normal for a plant of its kind. 

“You got me a gift card to this ‘Cosmic Vision’,” he waved the gift card at her, “Because someone there predicted the death of a plant?” He wasn’t convinced. Admittedly, it was a bold move to guess at a death in the family as opposed to the usual “you will meet a mysterious stranger” crap. People met strangers all the time, some of them were bound to qualify as mysterious. 

“Not exactly?” Claudia had the sense to look embarrassed. “Everyone else got something and the owner was this dreamy elf with amazing hair, and I couldn’t just get a gift card for myself, so.” She forced a grin, “Happy birthday, dad.” 

Viren sighed and made an effort to not accidentally crush the gift while putting it in his pocket. “Thank you, Claudia.” 

“I also made you dessert.”

This time, his thank you was a lot more genuine. Sweet treats aside, now that his king had ordered him to not do any work, and the party was over, he might as well go see what his future held. 

* * *

The edges of the storefront windows had distinctly elvish curved designs. They looked painted on, along with some more gaudy pictures of tarot cards, hands and crystal balls. His vision of the interior was obscured with layered sheer curtains.

Viren checked the address on the gift card again, to stall for time. The door did say Cosmic Vision on it. He knew magic was a thing and that some beings had the power to see into the future, but it was rare, to run into someone who was the real deal. As a young practitioner of the magic arts, he had had to do extensive research to find stores that had legitimate wares. And to even do that research, he’d had to find the one legitimate bookstore in Katolis that didn’t peddle books about love potions. Later, he had gained access to some old texts in the Royal Library, but not all of it was applicable. 

In other words, he was skeptical about this so called “Professional”. 

Inside the store, he had expected to find a dimly lit room with maybe a crystal ball on a table somewhere, but the room seemed to have a skylight, letting in soft daylight. The establishment was on the street floor of a four storey building. Viren squinted up, trying to see if there was some kind of a light fixture in the ceiling. No matter how he looked, it just looked like a window with clear skies beyond. 

“Huh,” he said out loud, feeling more like this might not be a giant waste of time. 

“Are you here about the plant?”

The voice made him jump and turn his head away from the ceiling fast enough to cause some whiplash. An elf in a glittery cape stood by a door leading to the back. Claudia had described him as “dreamy with amazing hair” and Viren supposed there was something to that. But then, all elves seemed to have nice hair, so saying that an elf had nice hair was like saying that an elf had hair.

He had been asked a question. “Sorry, what?” 

The elf smiled at him, one of those patient customer service smiles. “I see you have a gift card,” he gestured at Viren’s hand. 

Viren looked at his hand, clutching the card. “Ah, yes.” He straightened his back and put on his best face of haughty disapproval, looked around to buy himself some more time. His mask cracked a little as he spotted the large bookshelves covering the back wall, and noticed that while there was a crystal ball, it was set among so many glittery scarves that it had to be for the flare. Give the customers something they expected to see. 

The owner of the establishment was studying him, in the meanwhile. Viren saw the detached, professional curiosity turn into something else. Today wasn’t a good day for his composure. 

“I don’t, that is, this was my daughter’s idea,” he explained, reaching out to put the gift card between them, or maybe to draw the elf closer. “What does this get me, exactly?”

The elf approached and took the card. “What would you like?”

Viren did not take a step back. The eye contact was intense, and he wasn’t sure what he’d gotten himself into. “You’re a fortune teller, correct?” he checked. “So, tell me a fortune.” 

A grin was the only warning he got before a tarot card hit him in the face. It flew, flicked, from the elf’s hand at him, got him between the eyes. He caught it as it fell.

“This isn’t how you treat a paying customer!” he scolded.

“You are right,” the elf agreed. “But you’re not paying me.” 

Viren glared at him and turned the card right side up so he could better read the title and see the woman kneeling by a pond. The Star. “What even is this?”

“Just a piece of advice.” The store owner slipped the gift card into Viren’s breast pocket. When his cape moved, Viren could see beneath, and parts of his get up looked like they could be see-through. “It’s on the house.” 

Before Viren could come up with a reply, the elf had slid back through the backroom door. He stood there for a moment, debating going after him. It would be better if he just left, threw out the gift card, and told Claudia that he had gone, which he had, and that it had gone fine, which it hadn’t. 

He glanced at a garbage can on the way to his car, but just walked past it. In the relative safety of his vehicle, after having arrived back home, he looked at the tarot card. Had he passed through a terrible life change or was he feeling as though everything had turned against him?

Sighing, he leaned his head back. The answer was a yes, he supposed. But which was more relevant? 

Then he turned the card to look at the back and saw it. The curly handwriting. It said, “ _ The train _ ” and was signed, “ _ Aaravos _ ”. 

Viren stared at it. It answered none of his questions. What horrible customer service.

A knock on the car window startled him out of his thoughts. Claudia stood outside and gave him a small wave. He put the tarot card in his pocket, gathered the rest of his things, along with his wits, and got out. 

“So, how did it go?” Claudia asked.

“It went fine.” The faster he could make it to his home office, the sooner he could stop thinking about the whole ordeal. 

“Give me some details, what did he say?”

“There aren’t any details.” What kind of details she was after, he didn’t know. “He gave me a tarot card reading on the house, I guess.” If it could even be called that.

Claudia stopped chasing him for a second, confused. “You guess?” She wasn’t deterred for long, getting in one last question before Viren made it through the office door. “Does ‘on the house’ mean you’re going to go back?”

“No, it does not.” He shut the door. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been beta'd by thenovicewriter (on ao3), who's been a great help.  
> There's some descriptions of a car wreck in this chapter (it's on the TV).

The Old Castle of Katolis was under renovations that summer. The structure was thousands of years old and had gone through several changes during that time. Its location in the middle of a river meant that there was limited space for it to expand, so when living in the castle had been deemed too cold and drafty for modern sensibilities, The New Castle of Katolis had been built on the sturdier ground surrounding the old one. The New Castle was where the royal family lived, and it had been where Viren and his family had lived, too. It was equipped with fancy new technology, such as indoor plumbing and electricity, and was far less likely to fall off an eroding cliff. 

The renovations going on right next door were just one more reason for Viren to keep living outside the castle grounds. He needed to commute whenever he had to show up at the castle, but things such as event planning and speech writing, he could do outside the grounds. It translated to him spending a lot of time behind a locked door in his house. Even when he left, it was always work related; he needed to visit a venue or make an appearance at an event. 

Whenever Soren’s loud sports friends visited, he wished he had a convenient meeting to attend. After a particularly enthusiastic shout coming from downstairs, he picked up his personal phone and called his son. 

“Yeah?” Soren answered. 

“Tell your friends to keep it down, I’m trying to work.”

“Uh, I didn’t realize you could hear us. Sorry.” At least Soren sounded sincere. Viren could hear him yell at his friends to tone it down, both through the phone and through the walls. “Hey, dad, since I have you, can you solve something for us?”

He sighed. “What?” While hearing his son out, he continued to type with his free hand.

“So, we’re going on a trip up north next week, like I told you,” Soren explained.

Viren couldn’t remember that particular conversation so he said nothing. Soren was legally an adult, he could do what he pleased.

“Anyway, we’re debating on whether to take the bus or the train. There’s some pretty strong pros for both but the vote is split even, sooo,” Soren trailed off, waiting for his father’s input. 

Viren paused his typing. The tarot card, The Star, the handwritten words on it. _The train - Aaravos._

“Take the train, it’s faster, more luggage space,” Viren said.

“Alright, train it is!” There were groans in the background. “Thanks, dad, we’ll be quieter.”

Viren hung up. It felt like such a trivial decision, and it might not have been what Aaravos had meant. Still, the fact that he had recalled getting the card, when he had thrown it in a desk drawer the moment he had gotten back, and actively put it out of his mind, was strange. 

He shook it off, took a sip of his cooled down coffee, and got back to work. 

* * *

His meeting with Harrow had run late. It was half past nine in the evening when Viren pulled up to his driveway, exhausted. The meeting had been fine, just work as usual, but after, Harrow had asked him to stay for a drink. The invitation had been unexpected, the type of thing they had done years ago. A part of him had wanted to stay, but another remembered how much distance the king had put between them after the death of the queen.

Viren had made his excuses to leave. He couldn’t drink before driving home and he couldn’t stay the night in a guest room because then Claudia would be alone at the house. They both knew Claudia was old enough to take care of herself for one night. 

After locking the car door, he marched towards the house, loosening his tie as he went.

“--on the highway north from the capital, six people died and more than forty were injured after up to eighty vehicles crashed into one another due to unexpected weather conditions,” the newscaster was saying when Viren came into the living room. He just wanted to relax; seeing footage of a pileup didn’t help. Claudia was curled up on the couch, her attention divided between the television and her phone. 

She looked up when Viren sat heavily on the couch. “Are you okay?” She glanced between her farther and the images of crushed cars on the screen. 

“I’m fine,” he said. His leg hurt. “I may need to say something about this, publicly.” Condolences for the families and friends of the dead.

“Isn’t that more the king’s job?” Claudia asked. She had put her phone away.

“Yes, but he shouldn’t have to deal with this, I’ll do it.” He didn’t want to deal with it, either, but at least he hadn’t lost a family member.

“Good thing Soren took the train, huh?” his daughter piped up.

Viren was still staring at the screen. At least two cars were on fire, and there was a bus in the distance, stopped by a smaller car under its front wheels. “What?” 

“For his trip with his friends?” she prompted. “I know he mentioned it to you, at least a couple times.” 

“With his sports friends?” 

“Yeah, his teammates, whatever.” She leaned over to get the remote. “You know what, I’m just going to change the channel.” The car wreck changed into an infomercial. A knife that was also a spatula, how efficient. “Have you had dinner yet?”

Now that she mentioned it, he was starving. “No, I have not.” He got up to wander to the kitchen.

“I cooked some fish, it’s in the fridge!” Claudia called after him.

“Thank you, Claudia!”

“No problem, dad!” 

After eating, he stopped by the office to retrieve the tarot card. It was as he remembered, and he guessed he had followed its advice. The gift card was in the drawer with it. 

He thought for a moment, of the skylight, of the careful aesthetic, of the bookshelves by the back wall. 

There were books in The Royal Library, located in the Old Castle, left by their ancestors. They spoke of using plants and animals that had gone extinct, of performing spells in forests that were now parking lots. Reading them had been a favorite past time, but it also reminded him that had he been born earlier, during that more magical time in their great history, he could have been someone powerful. Now, he had limited time and resources to work with, and a job that kept him busy every day of the week.

Aaravos, it seemed, practiced magic for a living. For a moment, Viren allowed himself to wonder what that would be like, to wake up every day to do research or to hunt down spell ingredients, instead of what he woke up to now. Emails and phone calls and events he didn’t want to attend, with people who were leery about working with him. His own survivors guilt. 

He took both cards with him when he left for the bedroom. There were a couple of suits that needed to be picked up from the dry cleaner’s in the morning, he might as well do it himself, stop by Cosmic Vision on his way. Aaravos still owed him a fortune.

* * *

Despite looking, he couldn’t find any official opening or closing hours for Cosmic Vision. He found a website, but it was a weird niche fansite for Aaravos instead of an official site for the business. Judging from the site, the elf had a bit of a cult following.

When Viren arrived at the storefront in the morning, and tried the door, it was open. Aaravos sat behind the table with the crystal ball on it, flipping through a magazine. He looked up when Viren entered.

“Welcome back,” he greeted. “How are the kids?”

Something about the question was too familiar and knowing, it put Viren on edge. “The kids are fine, thank you.” He walked over and put the gift card on the table. “I’d like to redeem this now.” When Aaravos just smiled up at him and didn’t take it right away, Viren asked what was on his mind to change the subject, “What are your business hours, anyway?” 

The smile turned wry. “I’m here when I need to be.” 

“What, you gaze into your crystal ball and it tells you your shifts for the week?” 

“Something like that.” Aaravos gestured at the other chair by the table. “Sit.” 

After a displeased look to the side, he did. “Now what?” He paid perhaps a bit more attention than needed to how Aaravos placed the magazine away and folded his fingers under his chin.

“Tell me what concerns you.” 

Viren huffed, but gave the question some real thought. A lot of things concerned him, it had to be something public and not too personal. “The renovations of The Old Castle,” he settled on. “There was a ceiling collapse a few years ago, no one got hurt, but the timing was the worst possible.”

“I remember.” 

It had all been very public. “My concern is that there’s going to be a similar disaster.” 

Aaravos arched a brow. “With the renovations?” 

Viren thought of wailing and the crush of metal. “Yes, with the renovations.” He rubbed at his thigh, and Aaravos’ eyes flicked to it.

“Your concerns on that front are largely unfounded.”

“Why largely?” Viren asked.

The elf shrugged. “There’s always surprises.”

“Right.” He rolled his eyes, “Good thing I didn’t pay anything for this.”

“Isn’t it.” This time, when Aaravos smiled, there was a hint of teeth. “Give Soren my best regards.”

The chair legs screeched against the floor as Viren pushed back to get up. “If your goal there had been to help me, you should have been more clear. What if I hadn’t noticed the writing? What if I’d misinterpreted it? I don’t even know if I’m more grateful or angry, I should’ve never come back, what was I-” 

“Let me treat you to lunch,” Aaravos said, startling Viren out of his rant. 

Viren stared at him and then looked around, at the gaudy displays, considered the less than great location. There was no way fortune telling paid a lot. And there was a chance that Aaravos had saved his son. “If anything, I should be treating you to lunch.” 

“I accept. Come pick me up at eleven.”

“Uh,” was what he had to say to that. It was one of the rare days he didn’t have a lunch meeting booked already and he had planned to just pop back home, grab some leftovers from the fridge, if he remembered. Eat them alone in the office. 

Aaravos looked like he was expecting Viren to say something more coherent. 

“Alright,” he managed. “I’ll come by at eleven.” 

* * *

By eleven, Viren hadn’t gotten as much done as he usually would have in the morning hours. He kept thinking about Aaravos, and about their lunch meeting. Lunch date? What had he agreed to, exactly? 

When he stopped in front of Cosmic Vision, Aaravos stepped out, locked the door. He wasn’t wearing his cape, but even out of his fortune teller getup, in more casual wear, and out in the midday sun, there was something otherworldly about him. Viren looked until he couldn’t get away with it anymore and he had to reach over to open the passenger side door before the staring got weird. 

Aaravos swept his hair over his shoulder and climbed in. He took a moment to arrange himself so his horns didn’t scrape the car interior. “Where are you taking me?” he asked, once he was sitting as comfortably as he could sit. Good thing the car was spacious.

Viren hadn’t given it any thought. “What are you in the mood for?” He felt like he couldn’t just take Aaravos to a random burger joint, it needed to be somewhere more classy than that. 

“Well,” Aaravos looked like he found something amusing. “I suppose anywhere is fine, as long as there’s a vegetarian option.”

After considering it, frowning at the windshield, Viren decided that he was putting too much effort into this. “I’m just going to take you where I’d normally go when I don’t need to entertain.” He steered them to join the lunch time traffic. 

“Aren’t you entertaining me?” Aaravos asked.

“I meant for work.” Not because he had been talked into taking someone out. 

“I thought lunch breaks were when you took a break, for lunch.”

Viren was paying more attention to getting them off the main road than to the veiled criticism of his work habits. “I’ll take a break when I die,” he muttered. 

They arrived to a less busy side street. There was a parking spot right in front of a cafe. The location was discreet, and the staff and fellow patrons never tried to talk to him about politics or the personal life of the king; Viren liked it. 

Aaravos looked around as they found a table, and Viren spotted a few people stopping what they were doing to stare. A thought crossed his mind, that if he ever wanted to go somewhere and not have people paying attention to him, all he’d have to do was bring Aaravos. Even the waiter, taking both of their orders, kept looking at the elf all through their interaction. Viren sat back and felt some tension leave him, while Aaravos soaked in the attention like a sponge.

Both their drinks and food orders arrived in record time. 

For work reasons, Viren had gotten good at smalltalk, but he felt a little out of his depth, for whatever reason. Aaravos had it covered, 

“I like to think I know what you do for a living, but what about when you are not at work?”

Viren had to think about it for a second. “I try to read and spend time with my daughter, Claudia. My son, too, but he’s away for school and sports reasons a lot of the time.” And since he was with someone who might actually be interested, he added, “I also practice magic, on a pretty small scale these days, though.” 

Aaravos lit up, and it was literal, though hard to tell in the overhead lights and the sunlight coming in through the window. “I thought I picked up on that about you.”

“What about you?”

“Pretty much what you do. Reading, magic, though no children to spend time with.”

They ate in silence for a while.

“You mentioned kids but not a partner,” Aaravos pointed out.

To Viren, it sort of sounded like he was asking if he was available. But that probably wasn’t it, they were just having a conversation. “Divorced.” He took a sip of his drink. “Not a lot of people on the market for workaholic single dads out there, I suppose.” 

“What a pity, you seem so interesting,” the elf said between bites, 

Were they just having a conversation? “What’s your relationship status, then?” he challenged. He was disappointed when it didn’t throw Aaravos at all.

“I am currently available.” 

“That’s, great,” Viren said, for a lack of anything better to say. He cleared his throat, and ate the rest of his food. Whenever he chanced a glance at Aaravos, the elf looked pretty damn satisfied. Viren felt like he was being played, but he wasn’t sure what the game was yet. 

“How long is your lunch?”

Despite being suspicious about the motives behind the question, he answered, “Today, I have until twelve.” 

“Come inside for a bit when you take me back, I’ll show you around.”

Viren raised an eyebrow. “I’ve seen your, uh, establishment.” 

“I live in the back,” Aaravos informed. 

“In the storage space?” It was a good thing Viren was the one paying and not the other way around.

Aaravos smiled. “I think you will find it interesting.” 

As far as invitations to someone’s place went, this one was hard to decipher. Maybe Viren had just been out of the game for too long, but the way Aaravos spoke and sounded and looked made it hard to tell if he was being invited to the back for completely innocent reasons or, for other reasons. At least he only got minimal serial killer vibes, so he’d probably be safe, either way.

“I think I just might.” 

Viren handled the bill and drove them back. He felt uneasy, following Aaravos through the store space, but also curious about what he’d gotten himself into. Aaravos stepped through the door in the back first, Viren a couple steps behind. 

Behind the door wasn’t the dingy backroom he had expected. It was an open floor plan space, with a floor to ceiling window opposite to where they came in. Viren checked that it was still Cosmic Vision behind him before closing the door and taking his first cautious steps into the space. 

The walls were covered with bookshelves, except where there was somehow a fireplace. There were chairs by it, and a desk. A kitchenette in one corner, and a curtained off bed in another. Once he made it to the window, he could look down at the cityscape of the capital. 

“This is,” he trailed off. There weren’t any skyscrapers this high in all of Katolis, and they had come in through a store at street level. It was safe to assume that they weren’t where it looked like. “I’m pretty sure the city planners didn’t approve this,” he said, still staring out the window. He could see the castle, and his house. 

Behind him, Aaravos laughed. The sound drew Viren’s attention away from the view. At some point, Aaravos had changed back into his work clothes, and was fastening his cape as he came to stand next to Viren. 

“It’s not exactly in the city, if that helps,” Aaravos said.

“You know, I thought,” Viren started but decided not to finish. Xadia didn’t have a currency, and sometimes when elves moved to Katolis, they had trouble adjusting. “I feel cheated out of my hard earned lunch money,” he said instead. 

“Next time, it’s on me.”

Distracted by their surroundings, Viren replied with, “It’d better be.” He realized that he could still take it back, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to. “I’m free sometime next week, probably midweek.” 

“I’ll have to consult my crystal ball for my shifts, but I think I can make that work.” Aaravos smiled, self-satisfied in a way that would have rubbed Viren wrong if he hadn’t been too busy covering up his laugh with a cough. The elf held out a hand, “Let me give you my number, in case you can’t make it.”

Viren handed him his phone, and let him. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It feels like only about 2.5 people are reading this (one is me, one is thenovicewriter), but I'm going to continue posting anyway because why not. (The rating change won't matter until later)

In the end, Viren couldn’t make it to his lunch with Aaravos. They would have to reschedule, and that meant that Viren needed to call him. Or text. Find a quiet moment and reach out. It shouldn’t be hard.

Or, he could just not show up, and leave it at that. But the thing was, he didn’t want to; most of his socializing outside of work had been with Claudia, lately. She was great, but she was also his child, and if he wanted to spend time with another adult, that was no one’s business but his own. So, discreetly, he found an unoccupied corner between meetings and sent out a text, asking to change the date. The end of the workweek could work, if Aaravos didn’t mind getting a late lunch. 

It turned out that Aaravos didn’t mind, and that the end of the week was better for them both, scheduling-wise. 

The days continued to be busy. It was hard to make time to express his, and the crown’s, sorrow to the families of the traffic collision victims. The people seemed to think he should have done it sooner, or that King Harrow should have done it personally, and speculated on why he had not. It wasn’t flattering, thinking about it gave him a headache. There was a lot of things to handle, and now that the initial shock had died, the tragedy aftermath was just another task. 

Soren came back from his trip, and Viren came close to hugging him. Instead, he clasped his son’s shoulder and welcomed him back. Before telling him to keep his noisiest friends off the premises for the rest of the week.

On the day of his lunch meeting, they were wrapping up around two in the afternoon when Harrow approached him. 

“That was grueling,” Harrow opened with. “One might even go as far as to say it was,” there was a meaningful pause, “harrowing.”

Viren shook his head as he gathered up his things. “No, I’m afraid that would be going too far.” 

“I’ll take your word for it. You must be starving, too, join us for lunch,” the king offered.

He was tempted to, but. “I already have a lunch appointment,” Viren let him know, although referring to it as that sounded strange to him. “Perhaps some other time.” Likely never.

Harrow frowned. “I don’t remember seeing anything else in your calendar for today.”

“It’s, ah, not work related.” Viren regretted showing any hesitation, because it made Harrow grin and jump to conclusions.

“Well, it’s about time you got yourself back out there.” 

“It’s not that, exactly.” Some of it might be that. There had been a time when he would have talked to Harrow about it. Now, he decided not to elaborate, despite the curious look he was getting. 

“Anyway,” Harrow let him off the hook eventually. “Have a good time, be safe. I’m going to go eat before I drop dead.” 

“Yes, you go do that.” He had nothing to say to being told to be safe. While he recognized the implications, he thought he was in fact being reckless. The king left, and Viren finished packing up. 

Gray clouds gathered in the sky as he drove towards Aaravos’ business. The first drops fell on his windshield when he arrived. Aaravos was standing under the short awning, looking up at the sky. He had an umbrella with him, and it looked like he had braided his hair to hang over a shoulder. Viren checked himself in the rear-view mirror, to make sure he wasn’t a mess. 

When he glanced out the window again, Aaravos was gesturing him to come out. He joined him under the awning. 

“Leave your car here,” Aaravos said and opened the umbrella. “We can walk.” The brim was wide enough for both of them to fit under it if they walked shoulder to shoulder. 

Hyper aware of the lack of distance between them, Viren forced out a protest, “You could have picked a better day for taking a stroll.”

“Not necessarily.” Aaravos was smirking when Viren looked up at him. 

“You know, if you’re this desperate for physical contact, you could’ve just said something.” Viren wasn’t sure how he would have reacted, but there was no need for trickery.

“It’s much easier to ask for forgiveness.”

“That’s a worrying attitude to have.”

Aaravos shrugged, the movement jostled his braid. “I’m not forcing you to walk under the umbrella.” 

That was true. “Forcing, no. Coercing, definitely.” The rain was pouring down harder around them. “There was no mention of rain in the weather forecast this morning,” Viren commented. He would have come better prepared. 

“You know how forecasts are,” Aaravos said, dismissive. 

“You knew.” 

The elf nodded, mirth dancing in his eyes, “My magic eight ball said that it was most likely.”

It caught Viren off guard, and before he could stifle the reaction, he was laughing. At that moment, it occurred to him that, despite being hungry and tired, he was enjoying himself. 

“I doubt that’s true,” he said after coming down. They had come to a stop on the side of a busy street. People were hurrying past, some with their jacket collars turned up, some with umbrellas. Aaravos lowered his and Viren realized that they were standing under another awning. Through the window, he saw several tables full of people, chatting and eating.

Once inside, they were shown to a table by the window. Aaravos leaned his head on his hand to look out. It gave Viren a moment to observe him before it was time to order.

“Do you come here a lot?” Viren asked, once the waiter left. 

“A couple times a week, to people watch,” Aaravos turned away from the window, to pay more attention to Viren. 

“I thought you saw people at your job.” Viren didn’t even want to think about working in the customer service industry. 

“Not like this,” Aaravos replied. “There’s just something about humans going about their daily lives.” 

He didn’t understand the appeal. While his work forced him to interact with all kinds of people, Viren couldn’t say he cared about the mundanities of their lives. “Is that why you live here, instead of in Xadia?” Aaravos wasn’t the only elf who preferred living in the Human Kingdoms, particularly in Katolis. The capital had a thriving elf community, despite some fluctuating opinions on whether or not elves and humans should mingle. 

Aaravos smiled. “It is part of the reason.” 

Viren waited. Their food arrived.

“I’m going to assume the worst,” he stated.

“There is no need,” Aaravos started to elaborate. “I interfered with some things my people thought I shouldn’t have, got punished for it, and decided that humans were a lot more interesting to live among.” 

It was vague and unsatisfying, as far as explanations went, but Viren was aware that they weren’t in the soul-baring stages of their thing yet. “When was this?”

Aaravos pushed his food around as he thought. “I think a couple thousand years ago,” he said, after a while. “The move to Katolis is more recent.” 

“Thousand-” Viren choked on that information. He had met elves that were hundreds of years old, but he had only read tales of the kind that lived to see several thousand. “I feel young and spry all of a sudden.” And what did “more recent” even mean to someone like Aaravos?

“You are young,” the elf said, eyes flicking down and back up. “I don’t know about spry.”

It was either a come on, or Aaravos was making fun of him. Viren judged the odds to be about forty-sixty. “Honestly, I don’t, either,” he said, hoping that whatever the elf came back with would shed some light into the situation. 

Aaravos hummed and smiled at his plate, took a bite. And changed the subject, “You mentioned last time that you’re a mage.”

Disappointed that the tangent about his spryness, or possible lack thereof, hadn’t gone anywhere, Viren mumbled, “No one calls it that anymore.” Magic wasn’t the worst thing to talk about. At least Aaravos had paid attention to what he’d said, and was doing so now. “But yes, I did say that I’m a practitioner.”

“It’s disappointing, the decline in magecraft.”

“The resources are scarce,” Viren said, remembered his food. “And not a lot of people are genuinely interested, and if you get some bad information and do it wrong,” he shrugged. “Dark Magic, especially. There are still movements that want it banned.”

“And what do you think?” Aaravos asked, leaning in a little, interested.

It made Viren stumble. “Er, well, I mean, obviously I don’t want it banned, since it’s what I prefer.” There was historical evidence of humans connecting to the Primal Sources, but getting there seemed like a lot of meditating on mountain tops and what have you. He didn’t have time for that sort of thing. “It makes some of the elves uncomfortable,” he ventured. 

“Some, yes,” Aaravos agreed, but it didn’t look like he was among them. “I have a few tomes on the subject, if you are interested.”

He was interested. It was one of his rare nights off, with nothing on the itinerary for the next morning. It was easy to convince himself that he would have spent the evening studying magic anyway, so why not do it with Aaravos? “I think I can make time.”

The way Aaravos smiled and looked at him should be banned. “Good.” 

Once they were done, they returned to Cosmic Vision. It was raining less. 

“A few tomes” turned out to be an entire section of a bookshelf. A couple of them, Viren had or had gotten to borrow at some point, but most were ones he hadn’t seen before. He might have, subtly, geeked out. 

It led to an afternoon of reading and discussing magic. And even though Viren was a coffee person, he couldn’t say no to the tea Aaravos offered. 

By the time he came out of research mode and looked out the window, it was dark. Aaravos had lit the fireplace they were sitting by. “It’s getting late, I should go,” Viren said, reluctant, but trying to keep it out of his voice. He closed the book and made to take it back to its place on the shelf. 

Aaravos got up, to cut him off. “Finish reading it,” he said, placing a hand on the book Viren was holding. His stars shined brighter. “And bring it back, once you’re done.” 

“Are you sure?” At least this way, he didn’t have to angle for an invitation back. He had been given an excuse. 

“Of course.” Aaravos moved his hand to cover one of Viren’s. “I wouldn’t want to deprive you of the knowledge you desire.”

The fireplace made the room way too warm, all of a sudden. “How generous of you,” Viren breathed out. Much to his relief and disappointment, Aaravos let go and started walking towards the door.

“Allow me to show you out.” 

Viren didn’t have a choice but to follow. He felt a little dazed as he walked through the store space and to his car, Aaravos right there by him. He was fairly sure he wished the other good night, and got wished good night back. While driving back, with the book on the passenger seat, he returned to his senses more, and berated himself for having made what was most likely an awkward exit. 

The rest of the way, he focused on the road.

The house was dark. The kids were somewhere, he thought he remembered Claudia mentioning that she’d be spending the night at a friend’s house and Soren was probably doing something similar. He enjoyed the quiet, had a drink, and turned in with the book. 

* * *

When he showed up for breakfast the next morning, Claudia and Soren were there, sitting at the table in their breakfast nook. They turned to look at him as one. 

“Morning, children,” he said as he joined them, reaching for some eggs and coffee. On a normal day, they made a face at being addressed collectively. 

“So, dad,” Claudia started, placing her hands on the table, crossing her fingers. “Is there something you want to maybe, I don’t know, talk to us about?” she asked.

Viren stopped eating. “What is this about?” Whatever it was, he hadn’t had enough coffee yet.

“We know about the elf dude!” Soren yelled while hitting the table. Claudia poked him on the shoulder. “Sorry, the tension was killing me.”

“What?” Viren asked, at a loss.

“Okay, so, me and Callum were just browsing through some blogs last night,” Claudia tried to explain.

“Wait, you were with Prince Callum?” Viren interrupted before she could get any further. 

“Yes, but not like, alone with him, there were a bunch of other people and you said it was okay,” she hurried to defend herself.

More awake, Viren narrowed his eyes at her, “When did I say that?”

“Uuh, when I asked you? I was like, hey dad is it alright if I spend the night with some friends, and you were like, I’m busy Claudia, so I took that as a yes,” she barrelled through. “But that’s not why we’re here!”

“That’s right!” Soren joined in. “Your elf boyfriend!”

“My what?” Maybe he was still asleep and this was a weird, chaotic nightmare brought on by too much stress. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Hey, how come you can spend time alone at a boy’s house, but I can’t?” Claudia asked, side tracked.

Viren’s face felt warm, and the whole situation was making him agitated, “Because I am your father and I say so!” he yelled. “You need to tell me where you are and with whom!”

“I tell you, you just don’t listen!” she yelled back. “You tell me where you are and with whom, dad!”

“Can you stop yelling ‘whom’ at each other and tell me what’s with the elf already?!” Soren yelled at the both of them. “Looks like you’ve been spending time with boys behind our backs for a change, dad!” 

“I am an adult and I can spend time with as many boys as I want!” Viren shot back, in the heat of the moment. 

“How many elves are there?!” Soren looked on the verge of a breakdown. “I thought there was just this one sparkly guy!” 

“How do you know about-?” Viren interrupted himself, sat back, and closed his eyes and counted backwards from ten. “Stop yelling and explain. Now.”

Claudia tried again, after a moment, “I found this blog and a link to a website about Cosmic Vision, the fortune teller’s place I got the gift card for.”

“Yes, go on.” 

“Um, there were some posts with pictures of the owner, Aaravos, and you, as well as, uh,” she pulled out her phone and fiddled with it for a couple seconds. “There’s some speculation going on, being spread around, really.” 

“It’s your five minutes of online fame,” Soren said, once he recovered. “Congrats.” 

Viren held out his hand and Claudia gave him her phone. The pictures were candid shots of Aaravos and him sitting down to eat, of them talking, several of Aaravos walking him to his car from the night before. The last few looked like they had been taken through a window across the street. The quality was surprisingly good, he could see himself looking up at the elf, with an expression that could easily be read as smitten. The last one had Aaravos looking straight at the camera. 

“Asshole,” Viren muttered. If Aaravos had known something was up, he could have warned him. Unless the elf was behind this, somehow, for whatever reason. 

The comments were along the lines of  _ “hot elf but who’s this guy?!” _ ,  _ “isn’t he the king’s secretary or something?” _ ,  _ “no, that’s “Lord” Viren, he’s the king’s advisor/PR guy/whatever, read a book smh” _ and _ “Aara could do SO much better” _ . The last one was a sentiment echoed by many, though there were some who thought Viren shouldn’t be mixing with elves. Quite a few seemed to think that the particulars of his sexlife were now their business.

“Uh, dad?”

He looked up from Claudia’s phone to see both of his children looking at him with concern. “Right.” He needed to start with his kids, and then do some damage control elsewhere. “I have had lunch with Aaravos twice, and last night I went over to his place to study some magic,” he explained. “And no, that is not a euphemism,” he added. “We really did just sit around reading, and I suppose time got away from me, I didn’t mean to stay so late.” Not that how late he stayed and where, was any concern of his children. 

“This was your second date and all you did at the end was read? Nerds.” Soren got elbowed for that. “Ow, Clauds, I’m telling dad.” 

“I don’t think they qualify as dates,” Viren ignored the sibling squabbling. “In any case, it’s nothing you need to be worried about.” Whatever it was, it wasn’t serious. “And it’s certainly nothing as, as lewd as these people seem to think.” He handed Claudia her phone back. 

“We believe you,” Claudia assured him. “But, you know that if it does, go somewhere, you don’t need to worry about us.” 

Soren nodded with her. “Yeah, just give us a heads up if we’re about to get a new, sparkly elf dad.” 

“You’re not, but I promise to give you some forewarning.” It was unlikely to ever get to that point, but Aaravos being an elf and the push against more human-elf integration they had been getting gave him an idea. If he could spin their supposed relationship in a way that distanced him from the speciesist falling out of favor, it wouldn’t even matter if this had all been some twisted publicity stunt on Aaravos’ part. He hoped it hadn’t been, but it couldn’t hurt to plan for the possibility. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter four time! Read and tell me what you think :D

The oldest books in the Royal Library had been moved to storage during the renovations. It took some doing, both to find the time to go and to convince the right people that he needed to see the books. They were valuable historical objects, and not just anyone had access. 

Having connections came with certain perks. One of those perks being that Viren got to spend time in the temporary storage, scouring for any mention of Aaravos. If the elf was thousands of years old, and had started living around or with humans long ago, there had to be something written down about him. 

As Viren found out, there were a couple mentions, in books and papers ravaged by time. A lot of it was unreadable and the rest was hard to make out. He found some translators notes that were made by historians, about old poems and pieces of salvaged text. 

Aaravos, a friend to humans, and a powerful Archmage. Could have had something to do with humans starting to learn magic in the first place.

A living myth. 

What was he doing running a small fortune telling parlor? Why was he socializing with Viren, of all people? 

He felt off his game, and the people around him noticed. It wasn’t every day he found out he’d been having lunch with someone close to a divine being. He met with the king the next day, and Harrow looked like he wanted to ask, but refrained. Harrow knew about the rumors, he had to if his stepson had been there when Claudia discovered them, and had put two and two together. Whether he thought that the rumors were true and Viren had bagged himself a hot elf and kept it from him, or that there wasn’t anything deeper going on than two dudes having lunch, Viren couldn’t say. Unless he absolutely had to, it wasn’t something he wanted to discuss with his boss.

During his spare time, he read the book Aaravos had borrowed him. He still planned to take it back once he was finished and ask a few questions while he’s at it. Gauge if trying to keep seeing Aaravos was a good idea.

He could give Aaravos a call, but the prospect was too intimidating. It’d just be his voice, and among other reasons, was that it would be harder to tell if the elf was being honest with his replies. At least if Viren looked him in the eye, he’d have a chance. Maybe. 

At home, Claudia noticed that something was up as Viren continued to be distracted. He was often somewhat absent, but now his replies were two syllables at most, and whenever he wasn’t working, he was reading. A couple of times, sandwiches appeared in his bedroom or in his office without him noticing his daughter coming or going. After he was done with whatever he was doing, he would have to thank her properly. Maybe go back to giving her magic lessons, like he used to. 

Viren thought about writing himself a reminder, but wasn’t sure if he ever did. 

* * *

Done with the book and with being a coward, Viren drove to Cosmic Vision after work. It wasn’t late enough for shops to be closed yet, though it was cutting it close. Light shone through the windows and there were strings of fairy lights he hadn’t seen during the day, strung between the layered curtains. It looked gaudy in such a calculated way, Viren was impressed all over again. 

The door was unlocked, and with one last glance over his shoulder, he slipped inside. Aaravos wasn’t in the shop area, so Viren took some time to look around, drawn to the bookshelf. The books were more focused on divination than the ones in Aaravos’ home, and he could spot a few novels between them. 

“With the recent rise of hostile attitudes towards the elf population of Katolis, we can now at least rest assured that the crown continues to view our elf community in favorable light,” Aaravos’ voice came from somewhere behind him. Viren startled, almost dropped the book he was holding, and whirled around.

Aaravos was looking at him over the edge of a tablet, eyes gleaming with humor. “The crown can’t hate all of my kind if one of you is having a steamy, clandestine affair with an elf, I suppose,” the elf continued, no longer quoting the article. 

Viren straightened himself out, cleared his throat. “To be completely honest, I can only speak for myself on the matter, but my opinions get mixed with the king’s far too often.” He added, “And I wouldn’t call anything going on here steamy, clandestine, or an affair.” 

“As long as it’s none of those things, you think it is acceptable to use it for political gain,” Aaravos stated, placing the tablet on a table nearby. 

Viren narrowed his eyes, clutching the book tighter, as though it was a hostage. “I wouldn’t have had to, if you had warned me! I know you knew, the question is how.”

“I didn’t notice before I walked you to your car,” Aaravos claimed. His eyes flicked away from Viren’s to travel the shelf behind him. “I was distracted.”

Not entirely convinced, Viren snapped, “You still could have said something.” Distracted by what?

“True, but I wanted to see what you would do.” His eyes found Viren’s again, and they were smiling. “You spun it right around to your advantage. I’m impressed.” Before Viren could sputter out a response, he continued with a gesture towards the book, “Have you come to return that?” 

“I, why yes,” Viren tried to form a sentence. He was angry that Aaravos had let things play out because he’d been curious, and pleased at the compliment. He held out the book and Aaravos stepped forward to take it.

After inspecting the cover, running his fingers over it, Aaravos inclined his head at the door in the back. “Come inside, I’ll lend you something else.”

It was tempting, for magic related reasons and for non magic related reasons. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“I do, and it is.” 

Scoffing a little at Aaravos’ self-assured attitude, Viren followed him. “I did some reading on you,” he said as they stepped through the door, in an effort to gain ground back. Aaravos stopped on his way to the shelf, so Viren pushed on, “Not a lot of tales left of you, Archmage Aaravos, a friend to the humans.” 

Aaravos let go of the book, and it floated to its place, before turning around. “It is sad what gets lost to time,” he said. 

Viren couldn’t read his face. “It is.” He felt as though he needed to be careful, choose his words. “If you don’t mind telling me, is it true that you were behind humans learning magic?” 

“I played a part,” he smiled, rueful. “But I’m not responsible for what they did with it.”

“But you were punished anyway and the humans were cast out of Xadia,” Viren concluded. “I always thought the whole dividing the continent in two thing was a disproportionate response.” He had only read of it, and the wars and skirmishes were fascinating, from a scholarly perspective. “Also a bit illogical. It didn’t stop anyone from practicing magic, it just put the ones that did somewhere the elves didn’t have to see them.” 

“Out of sight, out of mind.” Something bitter flitted across Aaravos’ face. He glanced at the bookshelves, and another book came to him. He moved to hand it to Viren. “That is also what my punishment entailed, essentially.” 

Viren watched him carefully, accepting the book. “Isn’t that what you’re still doing, though? Peddling fortunes and people watching.” Aaravos didn’t live with other elves, despite how Katolis had a place for them.

“Well,” the elf grinned. “It would appear that you’ve forced me into the spotlight, and I do rather enjoy all the humans fawning over me.” 

“Telling you how much better you could do.” He was a tiny bit bitter about that, even though he couldn’t disagree. While he was in a position of power, and enjoyed a life of luxury few could afford, he wasn’t a legend. 

“Perhaps,” Aaravos seemed to agree, tilting his head. “Do you know if the king is still single?”

Viren went from bitter disappointed to good humor fast enough to get emotional whiplash. As he saw that the comment about Harrow was meant as a joke, he laughed, trying to shield his face with the book. “I don’t,” he paused for breath. “I don’t think you’re his type.” 

“A shame.” Aaravos pushed the book down, so he could look Viren in the eye. “But I am yours.”

“Against my better judgment,” Viren was surprised and relaxed enough to admit. He felt his face grow warm, and berated himself. What was he, a blushing teenager?

“Good. Join me for dinner.”

There was no escape, and he didn’t want to say no. “I would like that.”

* * *

They ordered in. The food was delivered by an older woman who ran a restaurant with her husband down the street. From what Viren could eavesdrop, she had known Aaravos for years and didn’t do deliveries for anyone else. It was reassuring to know that Aaravos did have some human friends that liked him enough to stay for a chat and who didn’t seem scared of him. 

“She sounded like a nice lady,” Viren commented when Aaravos returned with the food, hoping to spark a conversation. He wanted more details. 

“She is,” the elf said and for a moment it looked like that would be it, as he set down the food and fetched utensils. “I met her after I opened Cosmic Vision, her family has been very welcoming.” 

“Why did you? Get into the fortune telling business, I mean.” He tried the food and decided that he liked it. 

“It is much easier to present yourself to people in a way they can understand,” Aaravos replied. “They come to me for advice and I enjoy giving it to them.”

As he was also in the business of giving advice, and being aware of how he appeared to the world, Viren nodded along. “Do you have elf clients, too?” 

It looked like the question hit a sore spot; Aaravos’ brows knit together and he stabbed at his food with more force than needed. “You could say I’m taking a break from elf company.”

“I see,” Viren said, even though he didn’t. “You mentioned a punishment.” His company was silent, studying him, before judging him worthy of a response.

“The previous King of the Dragons pardoned me before passing away,” Aaravos shared, like he was just stating that he had gone on a trip and gotten back recently. 

Viren frowned. A punishment that lasted thousands of years. “But that was barely ten years ago.” He remembered, because the king and his entourage had been cordially invited to meet the new dragon king. It had been a time of political and personal upheaval. A faithful trip to Xadia. 

“Yes.” Aaravos smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. 

Instead of saying anything else on the matter, Viren concentrated on eating. The concentration lasted until the rest of the food was gone. Once he was done, he cleared his throat, aware that Aaravos had been paying close attention throughout. “Well, I guess I better get going.”

“Aren’t you going to share?”

He paused, judged his empty food container. “If you’re referring to what happened to the queens, you can read all about it.” There were still pictures circulating, of the wrecked car, of his relatively minor injuries. Opinion pieces about how both Katolis and Duren would be doing better if he had died instead. Some of them were well researched and he couldn’t disagree. 

Rising from his seat, he looked Aaravos in the eye. He saw hints of compassion, and it scared him more than contempt. “Thank you for the meal and the book.”

“You are welcome,” Aaravos nodded. “I’m glad it wasn’t you.”

“I-” his voice broke. He couldn’t remember anyone saying those words to him before. “Ah, yes,” he said, useless. “I’m glad the late king of the dragons pardoned you.” At least that was a real sentence, and he meant it. 

Aaravos’ eyes widened a little. He looked young. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” This was possibly the most awkward he had managed to fit into one conversation in a long time. They couldn’t just stand there and thank each other all night. “Like I said, I should go.” He pointed at the door, but made no move to leave through it. “The food was excellent.” Had he said that already?

“Yes, some of the best in Katolis,” Aaravos agreed. “Don’t forget the book.” He took it from where Viren had placed it, a spot a safe distance away from the food, and held it out, but just beyond reach.

“Oh yes, that.” He went over to get it, and when Aaravos didn’t let go, moving it towards himself instead, he followed the pull.

“Can I kiss you good night?” Aaravos asked, while bending down.

Filled with nerves, Viren started, “I’m pretty sure you  _ are able to _ -,” and then he was interrupted with a kiss, and by kissing back. The fine hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as he tilted his head, wanting more out of it. More than a simple peck. A taste.

He moved his hands and a heavy tome fell on his foot. He jerked back. “Ow, fuck,” he cursed, then looked down at their feet. “Oh no, the book.” He bent to pick it up, forgot about his toe. The cover looked fine, the pages smooth. 

“Sorry,” Aaravos even sounded contrite.

“Don’t worry, it’s fine.” Viren held up the book.

“Your toe.”

It ached now that he thought of it, but he could fix it when he got home. “I’ll live.” 

“But are you in pain?”

“A little?” he replied, unsure of why it was such a big deal. A toe was nothing. “But like I said-”

“You’ll live, yes,” Aaravos dismissed his protest. “It will be no trouble at all, and I feel partially responsible.”

“Yes, well, if you hadn’t also let go of the book,” Viren left it at that, since half the blame was his. He was meant to be leaving. This didn’t feel like leaving. He hadn’t backed away that much, and next he made the mistake of looking at Aaravos’ mouth as he said,

“I was preoccupied.”

And if Viren put the book down and leaned up, he wouldn’t leave that night. So he forced himself to back away, towards the door, clutched the book for strength. “I really need to get going now,” he said. “Good night.” Seeing Aaravos’ disappointed look, he almost went right back. He fumbled for the door handle, got it to open behind him. 

“Good night, Viren.”

By focusing on the pain in his foot, he turned, walked through the door, closed it behind him, walked through the shop, out the other door, and into his car. He locked the door, for safety reasons, then thought better of it, for different safety reasons. 

He sat there, forehead against the steering wheel. Tried to get to a mental place where it was safer for him to drive. His heart beat fast, he felt warm. Feeling like that from a kiss was irrational, he was being a child with a crush, and it was unexpected and inconvenient. 

And exhilarating. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's this again. Still beta'd by thenovicewriter :D This is my favorite chapter so far.

It was another day in a row of days filled with work and magic. The text, both in the book and on the screen of his computer, was starting to look like a blur.

“Hey, dad?” It was Claudia at the door, peeking in. Viren didn’t remember leaving it open.

He fixed his tired eyes on his daughter, “Yes?”

She edged in, Soren behind her. “You’ve been in here for two days now,” she started, eyeing the desk with Aaravos’ book on it, along with some work related clutter. “We think it’s time that you took a break.” 

“We’re taking you out,” Soren declared, and then added, “To get some food and fresh air, in case that wasn’t clear.” 

“I’m fine,” Viren said, drank from his coffee cup, realized it was empty, and frowned at it. “Can you get me some more coffee, instead?”

“No, we’re going to get you some sleep.” Soren pushed past Claudia, and closed the book, pried the cup from his father.

“That still sounds like you’re here to kill me, but alright.” Now that he was forced to acknowledge it, his eyes were heavy and his stomach protested the lack of food. 

“It’s the opposite, we’re going to save both you and the kingdom from your bad, sleep deprived decisions,” Soren corrected him, but also didn’t.

He was too tired to deal with this. “That’s not- Do you hear yourself when you speak?” 

“Okay!” Claudia clapped her hands together once before Soren had time to reply or look too hurt. She rounded the desk to help her father up. “It really is time for you to take a break, dad, come on.” 

He went with her, reluctant but cooperative. The book still had about a hundred pages left, and his notes on it were a mess. He had been reading it whenever he had a free moment, and he couldn’t remember a time he had been as dedicated to studying magic. But then, he also couldn’t remember the last time he ate. Maybe his children were right to drag him away. 

“So, the plan is,” Claudia explained once they had him on the couch. There was a sandwich on a plate next to him. “You’re going to eat this sandwich and nap for two hours, and then we’re going out.” 

“We have food at home,” Viren pointed out. He hadn’t gone grocery shopping, but he was sure someone had. 

“Not the point, you need to leave the house,” she argued, sounding a lot like her mother, all of a sudden.

Viren took a bite out of the sandwich so he wouldn’t say anything. Before he realized he was done and resting his head against the back of the couch, drifting off.

The next thing he knew, a phone alarm was sounding its awful, cheery tune. It didn’t sound like his phone, so he just wanted to ignore it and go back to sleep, but it kept getting louder.

“Maybe we should just let him sleep?” Soren said, somewhere in the distance. 

“In a few hours, when it’s actually nighttime,” Claudia replied, over the sound of her footsteps on the hardwood floor, and the alarm. “Turn that thing off already, it’ll wake the dead.” 

“But not dad.” The alarm stopped. 

“I’m awake.” Viren shrugged a blanket off. He didn’t know where it had come from but it was very fluffy and colorful, so if he had to guess, he’d say it was one of Soren’s. “What did you say about going out?”

“We thought we’d have an early dinner out, maybe walk around town a little, and come back home for a good night’s sleep,” Claudia explained. “Soren can drive.”

“No.” Viren sat up straight. “I’ll drive.”

“But if you’re tired-” she started.

“I’m fine. I’m driving, that’s final.” He ignored the exchanged look between Claudia and Soren, getting up to hunt down his car keys. After he found them in the bowl by the door, where they always were, they drove off. 

The kids had a place in mind. It was a small step up from fast food, but he was starving, and they hadn’t been spending a lot of time together. He could deal.

Soren and Claudia caught him up with their lives, while he nodded between bites. He let them in on his latest magic practice. Claudia was interested and asked a lot of questions, but he could tell Soren was bored with the topic. 

Afterward, they walked a couple blocks, and ended up on a familiar, busy street. It was near Aaravos’ preferred people-watching spot, they were closing in on the restaurant. As they walked past the window, Viren glanced inside and there he was, at the same table they had been sitting on their last lunch date. Aaravos looked up from his plate and their eyes met. 

The kids stopped to see what their father was looking at, backing up from where they had walked ahead.

“Hey, isn’t that your elf boyfriend?” Soren blurted out. “Aa-something?”

Before Viren could redirect anyone’s attention, and tell Soren not to refer to Aaravos as his “elf boyfriend”, Claudia started waving at him through the window. “It is! We should go say hi.” 

“We should just continue on our way,” Viren tried, but no one was listening to him. He watched in mild dread as Aaravos waved back and got up from his table to come join them outside. The memory of how they had parted was vivid in Viren’s mind. 

“Hello, Viren. Children,” Aaravos stopped before them. “What a pleasant surprise.” 

“I’m an adult, but hello,” Soren complained while Viren raised an eyebrow at the pleasantry, as code for: bullshit, you’re a diviner. 

“Yes, hello,” was what Viren said out loud, with his words. “You’ve met my daughter, Claudia, and this adult here is my son, Soren. Kids, Aaravos.” 

“Hi!” Claudia stepped up to the plate, smiling at the elf. “We need to trade hair care tips sometime and also, what are your intentions towards my father?” 

“Claudia,” Viren reminded her, keeping his voice measured, “We don’t ask people personal questions right away.” He was curious about the answer, but it was something he would rather discus with Aaravos in private, without the audience of random passersby and his children. 

Her smile dropped a touch. “Sorry,” she said to Aaravos, and then, much to Viren’s horror, went on to say, “I’m just excited that my dad has found someone. Did you know he hasn’t dated since mom left?” 

Aaravos glanced at Viren before giving his attention to Claudia again. He looked far too patient and interested. “I did not know that. How long ago was this?” 

“Oh, it was way back when I was little, so more than ten years, I think?” she looked at Soren for support.

“Something like that,” he nodded. 

Viren could only stare in disbelief and terror. He had the worst children in the history of parenting. 

“Our dad isn’t always the most emotionally available,” Soren divulged, leaning closer to their cluster of three. “But he reads your book all the time.”

“And,” Claudia picked up, “He stares at his phone sometimes, like he’s thinking about making a call, but then doesn’t.” She nudged Aaravos with her elbow, “Probably too scared to call you up.” 

“That is quite enough,” Viren rediscovered his words. 

Aaravos shot him a grin, and addressed the kids, “No, by all means continue, this is fascinating.” 

The kids listened to Aaravos, much rather than their own father. 

“Just tell us what you want to know,” Soren offered. “A friend of our father’s, is a friend of ours.” 

“Excellent,” Aaravos looked about a degree of mischief away from rubbing his hands together and cackling, while Viren felt about a degree away from an early grave. “Why don’t you join me,” he gestured indoors. “I think the table is still free.” It was, there were four chairs. 

“We just finished eating,” Viren tried to refuse, but his children were already flocking in behind Aaravos, and he couldn’t leave them alone to talk about him, so he went along. 

Once inside, his kids seated, he took his time getting to the table, to give himself a moment. There wasn’t time to dally for long, and when he reached the table, somewhat more in control of himself, he stayed standing, placing his hand on the table in front of Aaravos to get his attention. “May I have a word? In private.” 

Aaravos arched his brows, like he didn’t know what Viren’s problem was, and excused himself, with a smile at the kids. Viren led him to a hallway leading to the bathrooms, out of the field of vision for most patrons. 

“What are you doing?” Viren hissed, not wanting to be overheard. 

“Getting to know your children,” Aaravos replied, at a normal volume. “I thought you’d be pleased.” 

Viren glared. “I find that hard to believe.”

“That I want to get to know your kids?”

“No! You know exactly what I mean!” Getting information about him that he wasn’t willing or ready to share, that was the problem. And maneuvering into a position where he could be on good terms with the kids, while making Viren look mean and unreasonable for stepping in to put a stop to it. 

“Are you angry that we’re getting along?” Aaravos asked, smiling in a way that got Viren’s blood boiling. “I thought you would want your elf boyfriend to meet your children.”

Damn Soren and his loud mouth, Viren cursed internally. “I do, but this is too soon.”

“But it’s going so well.” Aaravos, still smiling, leaned in and lowered his voice. “Your children like me, and I like them. They are both old enough to make decisions about who they’re friends with.”

Viren was seething, but he refused to back away or blink first. They were standing far closer than a friendly distance. It was either an angry enemy distance, or an intimate lover distance. Perhaps a mix of both.

“I suggest,” Aaravos continued, “If you can’t take a bit of teasing, that you finish throwing your fit and leave. We wouldn’t want to upset the children.” 

Unable to decide whether the smug look made Aaravos’ face more punchable or kissable, Viren could recognize when he had been out maneuvered. “I don’t like you at all right now.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

They were standing so close, and Viren was so frustrated with himself, with his kids, with Aaravos. He needed an outlet so he grabbed the elf by the horns to pull him in the rest of the way. It was harsher than their last, and just as Aaravos wrapped his arms around Viren’s waist to get him closer, Viren pulled back, dragging teeth along Aaravos’ lower lip. Not hard enough to break skin, but hard enough to make him follow. 

Aaravos’ eyes were almost black, his iris a thin ring. “Come home with me.”

“No.” He wanted to say yes, but, “The kids, I’m their ride. And after today, you’ll have to wine and dine me first.” If he had been thinking rationally, he would have at least considered calling their whole thing off. That was a big If, and he had known, going into it, that Aaravos had a manipulative side. So did he. Black on more black was still just black. 

“That is cruel and unusual.” Aaravos leaned in again, and this time Viren let go of the horns, made a trail to his ears. They twitched under his fingers, he smiled against Aaravos’ mouth.

“We’re in public,” Viren parted. “The children are going to wonder where we went.” Just then, someone rounded the corner, heading for the bathroom, prompting Viren to take a couple steps back. “Good talk, glad we cleared that out,” he said, a bit louder than his normal speaking voice. Aaravos looked like he was laughing on the inside and struggling to keep it that way, but Viren ignored him. After straightening himself out, he made his way back to the table. 

His children raised their eyebrows at him in eerie unison. 

“We have time for one drink, but then we really need to go,” Viren informed them, much to their delight.

From close behind him, but not touching, Aaravos said, “My treat.”

Viren turned part of the way to look up at him, shoulder brushing against chest. “Don’t worry about it, I got this.”

“I insist.” 

After a brief stare down, Viren conceded with a sigh, “Fine.” As he sat down, he noticed Claudia widening her eyes at Soren while Soren just shrugged back. He had no idea what it meant, but at least the rest of their time there was a lot less humiliating. 

* * *

Another busy week. He had agreed to meet Aaravos for dinner, but in the end he couldn’t make it. They messaged back and forth about it, and Viren might have been harsher with his words among his coworkers than usual as a result. He had been looking forward to it. 

With people giving him either the annoyed or concerned side-eye, he went about his days. At home, Claudia had gotten into her head that she needed to read Aaravos’ books, too. While Viren was pleased that his daughter was interested, despite their magic lesson having fallen victim to his work schedule, he wanted to digest the information himself first, before giving her full reign. A lot of it was too advanced for her. 

After some negotiation, he agreed to let her read some of the notes he had taken while reading, on the condition that she wouldn’t neglect her schoolwork and chores. She promised to keep up with everything. 

Viren’s own reading slowed down because of his workload. He could only sacrifice so much sleep before it started affecting his efficiency, and even though he enjoyed learning about more about magic , the work had to come first. It was more important, in the long run. Knowing that didn’t stop him from wishing there were more hours in the day. 

It didn’t help that his mind kept drifting back to Aaravos. To their previous meeting, to their missed dinner date. They hadn’t scheduled a new one, but he was spending more and more time looking over his calendar, trying to figure out where to pen it in. The way they had been talking, he would need the next morning free as well. 

There was no benefit in wishing for time he didn’t have. The days passed either way, and he would have a day off, eventually.

One night, his phone rang. When that happened, it was an emergency bad enough that it couldn’t wait until morning. He had gotten a couple hours of sleep, he was good to go.

Without looking at the screen, he picked up, “Yes?”

“Did I wake you?”

At Aaravos’ voice, he sat up, “You did. Why are you calling me in the middle of the night?” They hadn’t known each other for long, but he still counted this as unusual behaviour. Aaravos sounded shaky, in a way Viren had never heard him.

“I’m sorry, I needed to talk to someone.”

He dragged himself up, to sit with his back against the headboard, frowning at the darkness in the room. “Don’t you work customer service specifically for that reason?”

“Slow day.” 

“Right.” It was a weird situation to be in; Viren had only ever seen Aaravos as someone put-together and self-possessed. “Look,” he rubbed his eyes with his free hand, “You can’t just call me at random hours on a whim. I’m already not getting enough rest.” Something was off, but this wasn’t the type of crisis he wanted to deal with on so little sleep. 

“Just talk to me for a few minutes.” 

His frown deepened. “What’s going on with you?” he asked, agitated. “I’m hanging up, we can talk about this later.” He was about to do just that, but a plea from the other end stopped him,

“Viren, please.” 

Sighing in annoyance at himself for entertaining whatever this was, unable to stay unconcerned now that Aaravos had busted out the devastating combo of his name and “please”, Viren gave in, “Fine, but you owe me an explanation.”

“Agreed,” Aaravos sounded relieved. “Tell me about your day.” 

“Well, as you might be aware, the king is about to meet with the queen of Duren, and we’ve been preparing for that for the past couple weeks,” he began. “It’s all been pretty standard, there’s been meetings like this before, but it’s always a bit of a hassle, arranging to transport a bunch of important people from one place to another.” He went on about the process, without giving away too much detail, then moved on to talk about some tasks he had done that day. It was sort of nice, to talk about work with someone he didn’t work with; he could complain about his coworkers, without naming any names, and not have to worry about everyone knowing about his supposed “beef”.

Aaravos didn’t say much, but he did let out an occasional sound, to show that he was listening and Viren wasn’t just monologuing at his empty bedroom. 

“I think that’s about it,” he concluded, unsure of how long he had been talking. His watch on the nightstand told him that it had been about half an hour. “Uh, I’ve tried to find time to read the book you lent me, but it’s been slow going. Claudia got a hold of some my notes, and she’s been poring over them, though.” 

“How long have you been teaching your daughter magic?” Aaravos asked. He sounded more steady and even, more like himself.

“On and off ever since she was little,” Viren divulged, his eyes starting to droop. “I think it’s been a few minutes. Did you get what you were after?” 

“I did. Thank you.”

Viren settled back down. “Remember, it’s dinner  _ and _ an explanation, now.”

“I won’t forget. Good night, Viren.”

“Good night.” He got the phone on the nightstand before he fell asleep. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I worked way harder on this chapter than any of the other ones. I don't know if it paid off but this fic is now officially rated M, so.

After what felt like forever, but was two weeks, Viren was set to meet Aaravos for dinner. He was going to drive to Cosmic Vision and they would get to the next location, somehow. It was a vague plan, aside from how Aaravos had specified that he should get there after dark. While Viren wasn’t a fan of not knowing, he was willing to go along with it, and presumably they would go somewhere to eat and then back to Aaravos’. For some discussion and a nightcap. 

He spent the day being jittery and absent minded, and trying to not let it show. It was a good thing he didn’t see Harrow that day, because the king was a person attuned to other people’s emotional states and he would have definitely noticed. At home, in the evening, he took more time getting ready than he remembered ever doing. Both of the kids were somewhere with their friends, so he didn’t have to deal with letting them know where he was going and how long he’d be gone. He would be back by morning and they wouldn’t even know he’d been anywhere. 

In the middle of all the anticipation, he was concerned about the late night phone call and its implications. If this thing with Aaravos was going to go somewhere, he did need an explanation. And not one of the cryptic ones the elf was so fond off. The kids liked him, and Viren supposed that was a good thing, but if he was somehow unstable, Viren couldn’t let him get too close to the kids. 

He might still follow Aaravos to his place and if it turned out there was too much crazy for Viren to handle, sneak out after and never contact him again. 

With his plan somewhat in place, he forced himself to stop scrutinizing all aspects of his outfit and general appearance, and leave the house. The skies were clear except for a couple of clouds drifting over the moon. It was a nice night. He took a detour to avoid the city center, to enjoy the near empty roads and try not to let himself think about what he was doing too much. The later was more of a challenge. 

The lights were on in Cosmic Vision when he arrived. The door was locked when he tried it, so he knocked on the glass. If he got stood up after everything he’d done just to get there, he didn’t know what he was going to do, but it wouldn’t be pretty. The lights going off didn’t alleviate his fears, but the door opening did.

To Viren, it appeared that the stars on Aaravos’ skin were brighter than the ones in the sky. That couldn’t be the case; his objectivity was compromised. “Hi,” he forced out. “I’m here, as agreed.” The words got stuck somewhere on the way out, but he managed. “You look, nice,” he added. Then berated himself for using the word “nice” and stumbling over it. There were so many better words to use, even though it was accurate. 

“Thank you.” Aaravos reached out to smooth down Viren’s lapel. “You look, nice, as well.”

Viren broke out of daze to frown. “Are you making fun of me?”

“A little,” Aaravos admitted, and cut Viren off with, “I am flattered, don’t misunderstand me.”

“Well, that’s good, I suppose.” Somewhat placated, Viren was distracted anew by the added detail of horn decorations. It made him wonder if elves thought big horns were attractive. He couldn’t recall reading or hearing anything about it, one way or the other. Maybe he should be more taken in by Aaravos’ impressive rack. 

He shook the thought off. “Will we be needing the car?” 

Aaravos smiled. “No, you can leave it here.” He stepped closer, to get the rest of the way through the door. He was holding a basket. “Are you ready?”

“For what?” Viren was not.

“Hold this for me,” Aaravos handed Viren the basket. It was heavy. Next, he snaked an arm around Viren and drew a glowing rune into the air. 

It happened too fast for Viren to process, but he didn’t recognize the rune, and he knew he hadn’t seen Aaravos glow like he did then. He felt electricity run through him; instead of hurting, it was tiny, almost pleasant zaps. His vision went white.

When he could see again, they weren’t on the street anymore. They weren’t in the city at all, surrounded by lightning bugs flitting over a hill of grass. He turned and saw city lights in the distance, and recognized it as the capital. 

Before the basket could fall from his numb fingers, Aaravos took it, and started setting up. The contents were normal picnic things: a blanket, food containers, drinks, and a couple lanterns with light bulbs in them. What was less usual, were the runes drawn on the inside of the basket lid. Deciding that he could ask about them later, he took off his shoes and got on the blanket. It was warm.

“You’re really pulling out all the stops,” Viren remarked, settling down. Now that he knew more about what to expect, he could try to relax. The warmth seeping through his clothes helped. 

Aaravos looked up from his preparations, gave him a tiny grin. “If you wanted unimpressive, you should have been more specific.” He added, “And gone out with someone else.” 

“I only have myself to blame.” Viren looked at the city, calculated their approximate location. “Underwhelm me next time.” 

A pause, Aaravos took more time opening a lid than he needed. “Will there be a next time?”

Viren glanced over at him. “That depends on how this time goes.” The way Aaravos looked at him then was starved. 

“Then I shall endeavor to make it a pleasant experience for you.”

“Ah,” his ears were hot and he needed to look away. He cleared his throat. “I was actually hoping we could talk. About the other night.” He accepted the wine glass with what he hoped wasn’t a shy look. 

Aaravos sat next to him with a glass in hand. He whirled the liquid around and took a drink. Viren followed his example. 

“The long and short of it,” Aaravos started, “Is that my punishment was isolation.”

Viren drank some more. “For thousands of years? Is that, um, is that a long time for you?”

“Yes and no. It felt shorter, the days stretched on and on. And it wasn’t so much the length of time, but being cut off from everything. When I got out,” he paused, drank, continued, “I thought it had maybe been a thousand years, but then I saw how far humans had come, and found out that, well,” he gripped the glass tighter, “I had been off in my estimation.” 

Processing, Viren followed a lightning bug with his eyes. “That must have been hard.” Being alone for so long and then being thrown into an unfamiliar world. “Was that what the phone call was about, then?”

“I needed to make sure, that I really was out,” Aaravos admitted, more subdued than Viren had heard him before. 

“I could have handled it better.” Viren had almost hung up on him, in his time of need. 

“You talked to me, like I asked. It helped.” Listening to Aaravos now, it sounded like he had whatever consequences his punishment had on him under control, for the most part. If talking to him until he re-centered himself was the worst it got, Viren could deal with it. 

They sipped from their glasses in silence for a while. It occurred to Viren that he shouldn’t be drinking on an empty stomach, so he tried some of the food. It tasted familiar, reminded him of the last time they had had dinner. 

“Is this from that place down the street?” he asked, to break the silence and get to a lighter topic.

“It is,” Aaravos went along with the subject chance. “I thought you might like it better than my attempts at following human recipes.” 

“I’m not great at following ‘human recipes’, either.” If he was mocking the choice of words, it was only a tiny bit. “Been too busy to learn, and I eat out a lot, anyway. Claudia likes doing it, though.” 

“She seems like a charming young woman.”

Viren didn’t want to spend the date talking about his children, even though he did think Claudia was pretty great. “She has her moments.” He hadn’t entirely forgiven her for telling Aaravos about his relationship history, or lack thereof. While there had been a couple short term flings his children didn’t know about, it still made him sound sadder than he was. “Speaking of, what are your intentions towards me?” 

Aaravos helped himself to the food, too, arching a brow at Viren. “Tonight or in general?” 

“In general.” He could make an educated guess about tonight. “I have to admit, you’ve inserted yourself into my life pretty firmly.” Not his best choice of words. “You already met the kids and they like you.” He hadn’t been planning on introducing Aaravos to them, at least not yet, before he knew if this was going somewhere.

Tipping his glass at Viren, Aaravos pointed out, “You aided that by making it public.”

“It was already public,” Viren argued, displeased at having the whole incident being brought up. Having a camera on every device was a curse. 

“More public, then,” Aaravos allowed. He opened a container of cut fruit, offered Viren some, shrugged when refused, and ate a piece. “Seems to me you have a vested interest in keeping me around.”

Viren wasn’t  _ uninterested _ in keeping Aaravos around, for various reasons. “This isn’t about politics, or my intentions, I’m asking you about yours.” Aaravos was right; he had dug himself out of one hole and into another. That didn’t have to be a bad thing, but he did want a straight answer. He watched Aaravos put the container away, and refocus on him.

“I would like to keep seeing you.” Smiling, he added, “For the foreseeable future.”

“I don’t even know what that means, coming from you,” Viren admitted, with a nervous laugh. “But I think we should give it a try.” It was a relief to find out that they were on the same page. He hadn’t even realized how much wondering if he needed to cut things off had been weighing him down, until the weight was lifted. The night was nice, the wine was good, and the blanket they were sitting on kept him just warm enough. 

“Want to hear about my intentions for tonight?” Aaravos asked.

Not one to back down, Viren toasted the air between them, took a drink. “I’d love nothing more.” The wine wasn’t strong, and he had barely had a glass, but the warmth beneath him contrasted against the cool night air, and their scenic location, put him at ease. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“Don’t act like you didn’t come here with the intention of coming home with me after,” Aaravos said, wearing an infuriating, confident smirk that made Viren want to punch it off his mouth. With his own mouth.

It was true, though. Viren had brought some supplies, just in case. “Yes, for some discussion and maybe a drink.”

“If that’s what you’re calling it, these days.” 

In better humor than he had been in a while, Viren asked, “Why, did you see the stars align for me being down for it?” 

Aaravos burst out laughing, bending over a little where he was sitting. He placed the glass down before he could spill. “I did,” he said after regrouping. “But I have also seen the way you look at me.” He leaned in, eyelids heavy.

“And how is that?” Viren asked, heart beating hard.

“Like the longing you feel matches my own.”

His cheeks grew warm, he was sure he was blushing. “That is incredibly sentimental.” He reached out to run his fingers over the stars under Aaravos’ eyes, careful. They seemed to shine brighter under the touch.

“Am I wrong?” Aaravos voice had gone breathy.

Instead of replying, Viren got up on his knees so Aaravos had to bend his head back for a change. He brushed away some of the hair on Aaravos’ face, noticed the way he was watching him through narrow slits, lips parted. Unable to resist an invitation like that, he bent down, coaxed the lips open farther with his own. He felt a shuddery exhale on his cheek, and Aaravos’ hands slide under his jacket, to grip at his waist. Tasted hints of the wine.

As he pulled back, Aaravos followed. There was a weightless sensation before his back hit the blanket. It had been years since a physically stronger partner had put him on his back; he had forgotten how much he enjoyed it. 

A wandering hand slipped into his pocket and pulled out a lube packet. Aaravos held it up with a raised eyebrow.

With such overwhelming evidence of his intentions and hopes, Viren couldn’t deny it. “I just wanted to be prepared, for the eventuality that, well.” 

“Such incredible foresight.” 

Aaravos was definitely making fun of him. Viren went to cross his arms, found out that it was more trouble than it was worth in his position and just let his hands flop onto the blanket. “You can put it back.” 

“Don’t be like that,” he booped Viren on the nose with the packet and held it up when Viren tried to grab it. “If it makes you feel better, I put supplies in the basket.” 

“I’m not sure it does.” Viren looked up at him with narrowed eyes. “In any case, I’m not going to let you fuck me here.” They were still outside, and even though there was no one around, he couldn’t risk it. Though, in all honesty, he might have been willing, a moment ago.

“But you are amenable, just in a different location,” Aaravos checked. 

“I  _ was _ ,” Viren said, emphasis on the past tense. 

“Perhaps you’d allow me to earn your forgiveness.” He trailed his hand down; chest, stomach, stopped at Viren’s belt.

Viren inhaled hard, let the breath out slower, glanced down at the hand. He was way too effected, it was unfair and exciting. “Take me somewhere private.”

Aaravos grinned, and the next thing Viren knew, he was zapped through space. He startled when his back hit cool glass. His car was across the sidewalk; they were back in front of Cosmic Vision. The pavement felt cold under his feet, but right then he couldn’t figure out why.

The door opened behind him and they stumbled through. Viren would have fallen if not for Aaravos’ hold on him. “Your things,” he said. They had left the basket and its contents on the field.

“I can go get them later,” Aaravos said, while guiding them through the store and beyond. 

Whatever Viren had expected to happen next, it wasn’t Aaravos coaxing him into bed with gentle hands. He kissed him, slow and deep and settled in close. This wasn’t a release of weeks of tension, not in a way he had thought it would be. This was something else. Viren didn’t want to think about it, so he tried gripping Aaravos tighter, pressing harder into the kiss.

Aaravos eased up. “It’s alright,” he gentled, cupping Viren’s face. “You’re thinking about this too hard.”

“Or not hard enough,” Viren whispered. He barely knew Aaravos, but his children had been introduced to him, and he found his thoughts slipping towards him all the time. And here Viren was, in his bed, looking up at him and getting lost in the softness found there. “I can’t make you any promises.”

“Then don’t.” 

It sounded too easy. “Aaravos, I don’t know that you really mean that.”

“I’m not asking for your heart. I’m asking you to let me touch you.”

Maybe he could put a pin on the conversation about emotions, for the time being. “Alright.” The way Aaravos pushed his pants down and without further ceremony, wrapped his slick, warm hand around him was more in Viren’s comfort zone. “Ah!” He threw an arm over his eyes, to hide how much he felt. It had been a while.

Aaravos pulled the arm away, placed it next to Viren’s head. “No, I want to see you.”

Viren looked up at him, wide-eyed, bucked into his hand. Keeping his eyes open when he wanted to close them and just enjoy the sensations was a chore. Aaravos had told him not to hide, and he wanted to do what he was told. So he gasped and took a hold of the bedding, eyelids fluttering.

“That’s it. Good.” Aaravos’ eyes had almost lost the iris, and it left Viren staring into affectionate black. “Be good and come.”

The pants around his thighs kept him from spreading his legs more, the way he felt he needed to. A whine left him, and he grasped at Aaravos’ shirt. “You,” he offered.

“Don’t worry about me.” He leaned closer, to get to Viren’s ear. “I think you’re right, tonight’s not the right time,” he said, kissed the skin there. Viren turned his head, pulled his partner closer to connect their mouths.

“What do you- oh,” Viren broke away and found that forming coherent sentences was just too hard. “When?” 

Aaravos leaned his forehead against Viren’s, illuminating their shared space. “When you relax and trust me to take care of you.”

Flushed and embarrassed that the words combined with the sentiment behind Aaravos’ intense eyes were his undoing, Viren came. The first syllable of his partner’s name melted into a moan as he shook through his release. It was more intense than it had any right to be, left him panting. Aaravos lay down next to him, a satisfied air around him so strong Viren could feel it. 

Before he could get any ideas or feel too smug, Viren said, “These clothes are dry clean only, don’t get anything on them.”

Aaravos rolled his eyes, smiling. “You’re so fussy.”

“I’m not fussy,” Viren argued, managing to turn on his side to face Aaravos. “I’m just very particular about some things.” He wiggled to pull his underwear back up, but kicked off his pants. 

With a tiny shake of his head, Aaravos twisted to get to the nightstand on his side of the bed. “I believe that is what I just said.” 

Viren huffed at him and left him to it. Then, he remembered what had been bothering him before and frowned. “My shoes are on that field.” 

Aaravos snickered, threw away a tissue. “I’ll bring them back to you.” When he leaned in for another kiss, and to run a hand down Viren’s thigh, Viren guessed he could get used to the idea of being touched with such care. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's light political intrigue time! Beta'd by thenovicewriter <3

During the following days, Viren felt light. Even the small racket Aaravos’ following tried to raise about him spending the night didn’t affect him as much. Judging from the whispering, some of his coworkers knew, but he was in a mental place where he could accept that them following gossip like that said some unflattering things about them, and not so much about him. He just smiled and took a couple verbal stabs at them. It was possible that he was channeling Aaravos a little. 

Harrow taking an active interest was a different matter. While Viren had known that it was only a matter of time, being questioned about his relationship still caught him off guard. 

“Soo,” Harrow started. It was around noon one less busy day. Viren had been roped into having lunch with him at the castle. “Is it true, then?”

“Is what true?” Viren asked, with feigned ignorance. He shoved more food into his mouth and took his time chewing. 

“You know, that you’re seeing this Aaravos person.” 

Something about the careful way the king enunciated his name raised Viren’s hackles. He did not want to be having this conversation. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, exactly, but I have been going out with him.”

Harrow’s smile was strange. “I’m happy that you’ve found someone,” he said.

“But?”

The king put his utensils down and looked at Viren. “The Xadian Embassy has been in contact with me,” he said, and held up his hand as if to stop a tirade before he was done saying his piece. “I want you to know that there’s no problem with you, as a private individual, dating, uh, Archmage Aaravos, but with your connections and how they’ve been trying to keep tabs on him and failed, they are worried, about the situation.” 

Viren followed Harrow’s lead and pushed his plate away, appetite gone. “Are you telling me that Xadia is worried that Aaravos is using me for, for what? Political gain?” He didn’t see it. They had just been going out to eat; how could Aaravos leverage holding him all through the night and attempting to make him breakfast for some nefarious purpose? 

“That’s not exactly what they said,” Harrow tried to reassure him. “They want to speak to him, to see what’s what, but he has refused all communication. And since you know him, maybe you could ask him to speak to me, and then I could give them an update.” 

“I suppose I could ask him,” Viren agreed, eyes watchful. “But with respect, both to you and the Xadian Embassy, I am not reporting on his comings and goings to anyone, and I won’t lie to him to get him to meet with you.” 

“I’m not asking you to,” Harrow was getting defensive, too. “The Xadians seem to think that he’s dangerous, or has the potential to be. This isn’t just me looking out for our political interests, I am also trying to look out for you.” 

“I’m doing just fine looking out for myself, thank you.” He knew, on some level, that they were right about Aaravos. He had seen hints of it, of the intelligent, powerful being, of the potential danger. But he had also seen the beaten down side, the side that called him in the middle of the night to ground him in reality, the parts of Archmage Aaravos that were vulnerable and affectionate. 

He wanted all of it.

Harrow was studying him across the table, narrowed eyes softening. “Will you at least talk to him, about arranging a meeting?” 

Viren sighed; it wasn’t like he could say no to trying. “Fine, I will talk to him.” 

“That’s all I ask.” Harrow sat back, relieved. “If he says no, we’ll just have to tell them that we tried.” He smiled. “Though, I am curious about the person who makes you look like that.”

Viren blinked in confusion, “Like what?”

The king just laughed and shook his head.

* * *

Wanting his shoes back and his kids insisting that they should invite Aaravos over, provided Viren with an opportunity to bring up meeting King Harrow. He didn’t understand why Claudia and Soren wanted Aaravos around so much, but Viren supposed it was a good thing. Rather they like him than hate him. Viren did catch the kids talking to each other in lowered voices a couple times, but they stopped or changed the subject when he approached. It made him think that he was the topic of conversation. 

It led to Aaravos at their doorstep one afternoon. Viren opened the door with Claudia and Soren right behind him. Claudia had dubbed the occasion Family Movie Night feat. Aaravos, and maybe it deserved a title, seeing how rare it was for all three of them to sit down and spend time together. 

“Hey.” Viren would have leaned in for a kiss, but they had an audience. “Come on in.”

Aaravos handed him a bag, “I brought your shoes, and a new book.”

“Thank you, remind me to give you the old one before you go.” 

“Wait, what happened to your shoes?” Claudia asked.

“We left them on a field,” Aaravos explained for him, while Viren put the shoes away.

“That answer just raises more questions,” she said, frowning. 

“We don’t need answers to those right now,” Soren pointed out to her. “What we need, is some snacks while I pick the movie.”

“Why do you get to pick?” she asked, crossing her arms. 

“Because I,” he paused to think, “am the older sibling.”

“Uh-huh, shouldn’t the guest get to pick first?” Claudia argued. They were making their way to the living room, with the kids leading the way while Viren and Aaravos trailed behind.

The siblings turned to Aaravos, who glanced at Viren before replying, “I will allow Soren to choose what we watch first.”

“Hah!” Soren ran the rest of the way to the living room.

“Claudia,” Viren addressed his pouting daughter. “Would you go make sure he doesn’t pick anything inappropriate? I’ll go get the snacks.” 

“I’m on it, dad,” she went after her brother.

He turned to Aaravos, “Give me a hand?” 

“Certainly.” Aaravos followed him to the kitchen, looking around, curious. It occurred to Viren that he should give him a tour of the house. Later, when he had the more important things sorted out. 

While searching the cupboards for popcorn, Viren opened with, “I actually have a serious matter I wanted to talk to you about.” It felt too formal, considering. He saw Aaravos deflate a little, from the corner of his eye.

“Go on.”

He found the snacks, placed them on a counter, and turned to his partner. “The King told me the other day that some Xadians want him to talk to you, and he basically asked me to ask you to talk to him, so that he could then tell them that you have been checked up on.” 

“I see.” Aaravos looked grim, but he made his way to Viren, to take a look at the food.

“You can refuse, naturally. Harrow said he’d handle it one way or another, and I’m certainly not going to force you,” Viren assured him, then leaned in, conspiratorial, “Honestly, I don’t think his motives are purely political.”

Snacks inspected, Aaravos looked to Viren, expression softer as he also leaned closer. “Oh?”

“I suspect that he wants to warn you off, to look out for me, since we used to be pretty close,” Viren divulged. 

Aaravos studied his face, eyes trailing back towards his mouth. “If I hurt you, am I going to have the full force of Katolis after me?” 

“Technically, he doesn’t have that kind of power, but he is very good at winning people over to his side, and I can be crafty, too,” Viren confined, sharing breath now. “So, yes.” 

Drawn in by the same force, Aaravos said, “Then, I’ll have to do my best, to do right by you.” 

“Are you making out in there?” Soren’s voice carried through the house. 

“We’re trying to!” Aaravos straightened out to call back. Viren let his head fall against his partner’s shoulder in despair. 

“Ew, that’s my dad!”

“You asked!”

“I was kidding! I didn’t really want to know!”

Everyone he cared about was awful. He felt a soothing palm on the back of his neck and pressed his eyes shut for a second.

“We will be done in a moment!” Aaravos informed Soren, who sounded disturbed,

“What does that-? You know what, never mind!” 

The contents of the conversation aside, it was kind of nice to have someone else handle Soren for a while. Viren didn’t have the patience for it, no matter how hard he tried. He just had so much more in common with Claudia. “You can stop bullying him any moment now,” he said, pulling back to look up at Aaravos. 

“I’m not bullying him, we’re bonding.” 

“Right.” They did have an actual important thing to discuss. “Anyway, meeting King Harrow, would you consider it, at least?” 

Back to serious business, Aaravos thoughtful. “If this was just about meeting the king, I’d do it, but.”

“It’s him doing it for Xadia,” Viren finished. “It would get them off your back.”

“For a little while,” Aaravos said, bitter. He turned to glare at the cabinets next to them, letting his hand fall off Viren. “I did my time, they said they wanted nothing to do with me and asked me to leave Xadia, so I did. But they refuse to leave me alone, it’s always something.” 

Viren studied him for a moment, mulling over the new information, fascinated by agitated Aaravos. “Are they asking you to do something specific?”

“They come asking for ‘small favors’, I tell them to contact me during official business hours.” 

Viren frowned, “But you don’t have-” then it clicked. He hadn’t been able to find the business hours anywhere. “Oh.” Aaravos was looking at him from the corner of his eye with a tiny hint of mischief. He hid a smile with his hand so they wouldn’t get sidetracked again, tried to disguise it as him rubbing his beard in thought. “If you don’t want to do it, I can tell Harrow that I tried. I can’t promise you that they’ll give up, though.” 

“I will do it if you ask me,” Aaravos offered.

“I wouldn’t ask you to do anything that makes you this uncomfortable,” was Viren’s immediate response. He had no love for Xadia, he owed them nothing, and as he saw it, neither did Aaravos. 

Aaravos turned to him, smiled, touched his cheek. “I am curious about your king, and I can be pretty evasive.” 

“‘Pretty evasive’ is an understatement,” Viren pointed out, turning his head into the hand. “I will tell the king that you’ll do it, then.”

“Will you be there?”

“I can reschedule some things, twist some arms, if you want me there,” he promised. Attending the meeting would mean extra work for him, but for this, he’d do it. 

“I’d appreciate it.” 

From down the hall, they heard, “I will send Claudia in to get the snacks any moment now!”

“You will not!” Claudia protested. There was some faint arguing, Viren couldn’t make out what was said.

“We better join them,” he said, with a put upon sigh. He fetched a couple bowls, poured the snacks in, and handed one of them to Aaravos before taking the other. When they got back to the living room, the kids were seated in the corners of the couch, leaving them to sit in the middle, with Viren between Aaravos and Claudia, and Soren next to Aaravos. 

Soren made a face at Aaravos, but accepted the snacks as a peace offering, and hit play. It was some kind of an action movie Viren didn’t remember ever hearing about. Then again, he only watched movies with his kids, and they hadn’t done it in a long time. At least the bad guys in the movie weren’t elves or dragons, so he guessed Claudia had done her job. He got a little bit into it, entertained at least.

Somewhere past the midpoint, he noticed Aaravos having an on and off quiet conversation with his son. They fell silent during explosions and picked it back up in the quieter scenes between. 

“Yeah, so this series has like six parts so far but only the first two are any good,” Soren was saying. “Or I guess the third one is okay, but it has this magic user character, and when I watched it with Claudia, she wouldn’t shut up about inaccuracies in the portrayal or whatever. I do not want to watch it with dad, he’ll be unbearable.”

Viren frowned at the screen, Claudia didn’t seem to be listening. 

“I’ve noticed your father can be very particular about some things,” Aaravos said, and Viren felt called out. Those were the words he had used to describe himself; the last time Aaravos had called him ‘fussy’ for it. 

“Magic, his job, Claudia’s schooling,” Soren listed while sinking down onto the cushions. “Not about sports or anything like that, of course.”

“That’s more where your interests lie.”

“I’ve made captain in basically every team I’ve been in since kindergarten, but he’s seen maybe one or two games,” Soren said, sullen before catching himself and sitting up more. “But he’s busy, and I get that, it’s important work.” 

They watched the movie in silence, a car chase this time, before Aaravos spoke again, “You know, I could probably persuade him to come see a game.” 

“Yeah? Dad’s not exactly easy to make do anything.” 

Viren saw Aaravos smile from the corner of his eye. It was too unholy a look for children to witness. 

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Aaravos drawled. 

The conversation was going places he didn’t appreciate, so Viren made his eavesdropping known. “I’m right here, I can hear you scheming,” he said, leaning into his partner to not disturb Claudia, and because he wanted to. His daughter was off in her own world, anyway. 

Aaravos turned to sit so he could face him, leaning his arm on the backrest. “Does that mean you’ll put up a token resistance or have I already talked you into it?” 

“Aren’t those just the same option?” Viren asked, arching his brows.

“Token resistance then.”

“It’s genuinely a scheduling issue,” he protested. “My free time just doesn’t align with Soren’s games. They last for several hours, they’re outside Katolis sometimes, so there’s travel time to think of,” he listed his reasons. “It’s great that he’s doing so well, but I just haven’t been able to make the time.”

“I’ll work on him,” Aaravos told Soren over his shoulder. Soren went back to watching the movie with a pleased smile. 

“Hey,” Claudia leaned over her father to whisper to Aaravos. “While you’re at it, can you also talk him into letting me read your books?”

“I’m afraid that I must trust your father about your skill level,” he explained, without seeming to mind the constant pestering, like he was enjoying the attention. “I wouldn’t want to put you in danger.” 

“I wouldn’t use the information, I just want to read them,” she argued. Viren knew she wouldn’t be able to keep that promise. He was relieved to notice that it was something Aaravos picked up on, as well.

“If your father permits, I’d like to participate in your magic lessons, to help evaluate what you’re ready for,” he said, smiling with the patience of a saint. Claudia turned pleading eyes to her dad.

It did all sound reasonable enough. “Alright,” he relented. “I permit it, but I want to be present.” 

“Yes!” she cheered. “Thank you! I know so many things about bugs,” she informed Aaravos, with perhaps more enthusiasm than required. 

“I’m sure I’ll be impressed. I know a few things about bugs myself.” 

They fell silent during the final stretch of the movie. Viren wasn’t paying attention, thinking about how well today was going. It was surreal, it was too fast, but Aaravos was integrating into his little family unit, and it didn’t feel like an invasion. It should, so why didn’t it?

He had been staring in the direction of the television, but when he turned towards Aaravos, the other was looking back. His eyes widened at the sudden proximity.

“Now that the movie is over,” Aaravos said, “Would you mind giving me a house tour?” 

Taking a glance at the screen revealed that the end credits were playing. He definitely needed a break. “I don’t mind at all, let’s go.” It came out too eager, but he was on his feet and leaving the room before anyone could comment, so it didn’t count. They made it as far as the staircase.

“You seem preoccupied. Is there something wrong?” 

Viren stopped a couple steps above Aaravos and turned. It gave him the high ground for once. “There’s nothing wrong,” he said, frowning at the admission. 

Aaravos looked quizzical. “Explain it to me.”

“It’s dumb,” Viren tried but his partner didn’t give up so easily. “I, it’s,” he gave in, glanced at a spot above Aaravos’ head before establishing eye contact again. “You’re good with the kids, and this is going so well, it makes me feel weird.” 

“You didn’t like me meeting the kids initially because you thought I had arranged for it to happen.” 

“Had you?” Viren pressed, a little peeved that the assumption was so spot on.

“Does it matter?” Aaravos asked, shrugging. 

Then this might have been the first time Aaravos got introduced to the kids as the person he was seeing. He couldn’t even argue that it would have happened at his own pace; it would have still been fast. It wouldn’t have changed the fact that the kids liked Aaravos, and they all got along. ”I suppose not.”

“In that case, you’re right,” Aaravos started, a grin forming. “There’s nothing wrong and you’re being dumb.” 

Viren snorted, rolling his eyes. “Doesn’t say good things about you that you’re so nice when the kids are around, but such a dick when we’re alone.” 

“That’s hardly fair; I’m nice to you.” 

“Occasionally,” he agreed. They were alone for the first time that day without anyone expecting them back right away. “Though, when you are, you can be very nice.”

“I’ve wanted to be very nice to you the whole day.” Aaravos took a step up.

“I don’t think the stairs are the best place for it,” Viren pointed out. They should finish going upstairs, maybe find a door that locked. It was so easy to walk in on them from the living room. It’d also be easy for them to fall. “Come on.” He didn’t move right away; it took more effort than he expected to make himself go up the stairs. “House tour.” 

He got to the end of the staircase. The hallway led to two directions, with one having his office and the master bedroom, and the other the kids’ rooms and the guestrooms. Viren conveyed this information to Aaravos, but got the impression that he wasn’t really listening. When he met Viren’s eye, he tapped his mouth with a finger, smirking. Viren huffed, like he was annoyed, like it was a chore. A moment of token resistance before closing the distance. 

He had waited, too, for hours and hours. 

Smiling, he parted.

“Hello,” Aaravos said, and Viren laughed.

“Should we kiss goodbye, too, just in case we don’t get the chance later?” he asked before doing just that. They spent more time on it; the next time they’d see each other would be at the meeting with the king. There’d be no kissing at the castle. 

They got back downstairs later, and by that time Claudia and Soren had started the next movie. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More chapters, more things happening, oohh.   
> I'd like to thank the couple of you who have taken the time to comment, it means a lot :D

After power walking through the castle hallways, Viren came to a stop near the office the meeting would be held in. Aaravos was there, standing near the door, suited up and human-professional looking. No tie, but he could probably get away with it. Viren stared until Aaravos turned to look at him and he couldn’t keep standing in the middle of the hallway like an idiot. 

“Hey,” he greeted, went up to his partner. “Sorry, I meant to be here earlier but something came up.” He stepped closer to fix the collar of Aaravos’ shirt, even though there was nothing wrong with it. 

“I debated wearing something more traditionally Xadian,” Aaravos explained. Viren looked up, saw his smile and realized that he had been caught.

He took a step back. “Yes, well, this does make you look more like a citizen of Katolis, and I’m assuming that is what you want.” 

“It is.” 

They stood there for a while. Viren kept checking his watch.

“Nervous?” Aaravos asked.

Viren glanced at him, then back at his watch. The meeting should start any minute, once Harrow got there. “Why would I be nervous? This is about you.”

“Mainly, but your king is also meeting your elf boyfriend.”

“Officially, it’s all about you and Xadia,” Viren insisted, frowning, “I wish people would stop referring to you as my ‘elf boyfriend’, makes it sound like I also have a human boyfriend.”

Aaravos raised an eyebrow, “But you don’t.”

“Of course not.” He wouldn’t dare, and wasn’t the type to juggle multiple partners, anyway.

“And it’s the ‘elf’ part you object to, not so much the ‘boyfriend’.” 

“Oh, uh,” Viren said, at his very smartest. “Not as such? I mean, it sounds a bit juvenile, but as, as a concept,” he tried to explain. “Referring to a partner you have some level of commitment to,” he stopped when he noticed Aaravos trying to hide a grin with a hand. “What?” Had he said too much? Was he getting ahead of himself? 

Aaravos waved him off, schooling his expression. “You’re adorable,” he said, and went on before Viren could sputter out a protest, “I’d say that we have that ambiguous ‘some level of commitment’, wouldn’t you?” 

Looking at where he was and under what circumstances, even Viren couldn’t keep thinking that what they had was casual. “I can’t really argue that we don’t.” It wasn’t as hard to admit as he had expected; it was a relief to have confirmed out loud. The confirmation called for something, but was left hanging between them. Aaravos’ eyes flicked from Viren to behind his shoulder, and he turned to follow the line of sight.

Harrow was coming down the hallway with a small entourage. Most of them left before he reached them, but a member of the security team stayed a couple steps behind the king. Viren looked back at Aaravos to gauge his mood, and found it both a relief and suspicious to see him calm, watching the king get closer. 

The guard stayed farther back as Harrow came up to them. “I apologize, my previous engagement ran a bit longer than I’d expected,” he said to Aaravos who inclined his head a little.

“That is quite alright.”

“Viren, I see that you really did manage to show up,” Harrow addressed him.

“No one told me not to.” At least, no one told him not to while being decisive enough about it. 

“I would like a word with both of you separately before the meeting is over.”

“May I ask why?” Viren asked.

“It’s just to get a better read on the situation.” The way he said it meant that it was a task he had gotten, and he wasn’t happy about doing it.

“You running errands for Xadia, to report to them about a citizen of Katolis sets a bad precedent,” Viren pointed out, perhaps more sharply than he meant to. 

“We keep an eye on people with a criminal past,” Harrow tried to argue.

“But the king doesn’t do it personally, especially not on the behest of a foreign nation. And while letting them dictate who gets to be present?” Viren softened his manner, now that he had made his main point, “Harrow, you must realize that these are unreasonable demands.” 

Harrow sighed. “We should move this discussion into the office.” They stepped inside behind Harrow, and the bodyguard staying in the hallway closed the door. The king sat behind a desk while Aaravos sat in the chair in front of it. Viren got another chair from the corner of the room to join him. “Sorry about that, you’re not officially here,” Harrow said.

“Did they tell you not to invite me?”

Harrow looked uncomfortable, glancing to the side. “Let’s just say that they were very adamant about how you couldn’t be objective when it comes to Aaravos.”

“I would’ve made the same arguments I just did, had this been about someone else,” Viren argued. He was trying to keep it professional, but having his principles questioned made it difficult. Even though he had to admit that he wouldn’t have been so persistent on just anyone’s behalf. 

“I know,” Harrow assured him. “And I would’ve been more determined to have my advisor present for a meeting like this.” 

Knowing that Harrow still thought he was capable put Viren more at ease. They were all on the same side. He looked over at Aaravos and saw him studying them, sat back in his chair and relaxed. For someone who had been around for as long as he had, this probably wasn’t the first time he had been around powerful people. His eyes went from the king back to Viren, and he smiled.

“Is it my turn to say my piece, or do you have this handled?” he asked. There was something appreciative in his manner. Now that Viren’s attention wasn’t on the king, he couldn’t get over how good Aaravos looked in his human best.

Distracted, Viren replied, “I have this handled, but you are allowed to speak, just make it sound smart.” He hadn’t seen Aaravos decked out in full elven regalia, but that could be interesting. Though, at least like this, he knew how to get it off.

The king cleared his throat. “I did invite him here so I could talk to him.”

Viren forced himself out of his head and back into the situation at hand. “Yes, I understand. I merely wanted to make my objections clear.” 

“Your objections are noted,” Harrow said, before addressing Aaravos, “I never got the full explanation of what you did, which is a little distressing,” he admitted. “As far as I’m concerned, you did your time, and you have been a law abiding citizen while you’ve lived in Katolis.”

Aaravos’ expression turned cordial. “If it eases your mind, I didn’t get in trouble for hurting humans.”

“It does.” The king’s shoulders lost some of their tension. “Though, I suppose that wouldn’t have been something you’d get in that much trouble for, back in the day.” 

“Sadly, that was the case. Trying to do the opposite, however,” Aaravos trailed off, gave the king a meaningful look. 

As much as Viren wanted to know the exact details of what had happened, it was a clever move to hint that Aaravos had always been a powerful ally to humans. It was the type of thing that would win Harrow over; suffering for a greater cause, to help those born less fortunate than you. “Humans were at the very bottom of the hierarchy,” he helped drive the point across. 

Harrow nodded, looking thoughtful. “And how do you feel about that, now?” he asked Aaravos. 

“I have been trying to not get involved after I was released, to take some time for myself to recover,” he explained. “But if Xadia insists that I do, I know where my allegiances lie.” He smiled, “My King.” 

Viren thought he was laying it on a bit thick, but tried to keep his face neutral. Until he saw evidence to the contrary, he’d treat this as Aaravos being sincere, and right then he didn’t have a reason to believe otherwise. When Harrow looked at him, he gave a small shrug to indicate that he didn’t know of anything that’d contradict what Aaravos was saying. 

“Well then.” Harrow smiled, friendlier now that his biggest concerns were put on hold. “I don’t see why we’d have a problem. But tell me this,” he leaned forward, narrowing his eyes. “What are your intentions towards Viren?”

“Harrow, please,” Viren protested.

The king raised a hand to silence him, “Just let me get this off my chest.” 

While shielding himself from the situation with a hand over his face, Viren could observe Aaravos from the corner of his eye. His partner looked amused. This was the third time he had been asked the same question.

“I assure you that I intend to treat him well.” 

“See that you do.”

Combined with their conversation about commitment in the hallway, the reassurance made Viren feel flustered. It made the whole thing official; they were together now, possibly for the long run. Allies in life. 

“Viren,” Harrow got him to stop hiding and try to gather himself. “Would you give us a moment?”

Relieved to be excused despite everything it implied, Viren stood up. “Of course.” On his way, he stopped to give Aaravos’ shoulder a squeeze, to give him some support, but also just to touch him. Aaravos took his hand before he could slip away.

“Have a word with the guard, maybe he’s lonely,” Aaravos said as Viren searched his face for hints as to what he meant. His partner arched his eyebrows at him.

“Maybe he is,” he said, and let go to walk out the door and close it behind him. 

The bodyguard was standing in the hallway, next to the door, back straight, eyes forward. Now that Viren was paying attention, he recognized him as Marcos. Something nagged at him, about the guard, about Aaravos’ words, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He pretended to look at his phone for a while; the guard’s eyes moved to stare at him. While Viren was seeing him in his peripheral, Marcos’ watch caught the light in a way the tie pin holding his standard tie in place didn’t. 

Marcos turned away when Viren looked up. “Remind me,” Viren asked, “Which one are you, again?” He was looking for a flicker of offense; they weren’t friends, but they shared a professional relationship where they at least knew each other’s names. 

There was nothing. “I’m Marcos. Sir.” He sounded stuffy, like he had come to work sick.

“Ah, that’s right. Forgive me, I get you mixed up all the time.” He didn’t, he knew all of Harrow’s security staff by face and name. And by voice. 

“Don’t worry about it, sir.” 

He messaged Amaya to get to their location with backup and Harrow to call him back in. After a couple of minutes of waiting, he heard Harrow through the door, telling him to step back inside. He closed the door, and went around the desk.

“Did you know that the guard isn’t who he seems to be?” he whispered. Harrow looked surprised enough for him to believe that the king had nothing to do with whatever was going on.

“What do you mean?” Harrow asked, also keeping his voice down. 

“I suspect that our friends over the border have gotten a bit too curious,” Viren explained. “I’ve already called Amaya, she’s on her way.”

Aaravos got up to join their whispering circle. “I can confirm it for you.”

Viren turned to him, “Break the illusion?”

“Yes.”

Harrow glanced between them. “Once Amaya gets here, we move.” Viren nodded, but his eyes were on Aaravos.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” 

“What was I supposed to say? ‘Watch out, the guard’s a Xadian spy’ and have him run away?” Aaravos mocked. “I was waiting for the right moment.” 

“That just sounds like an excuse to me,” Viren argued, irritated at being made fun of at such a moment. “You wanted him to hear what was said, for, for,” he couldn’t come up with anything on the spot.

“Yes,” Aaravos leaned down to have some level of privacy even with the king right next to him. “I wanted them to know that despite how they’re hoping that I’d come out of my punishment a broken man, the present suits me well, and that I’d rather side with humans than them, which they should already know.” 

While he was glad that Aaravos was doing well despite the hardships he had faced, Viren couldn’t let this slide that easily. “There’s still a spy in the castle, this is a serious security breach,” he almost raised his voice.

“It’s likely that this isn’t the first time,” Aaravos mused, before smirking. “I have just alerted you to a major weakness in your security, you should be grateful.” 

“Grateful?” Viren whisper-yelled. It was alarming news, and also something Xadia would never admit to doing. Katolis would have a hard time proving it had happened more than once. But then, spying on a single conversation one time was a lot easier to smooth over than spying on who knows how many meetings during an unknown length of time. 

Viren’s phone buzzed, so he let Aaravos’ shady ways be for now to deal with the matter at hand. “Security has reached the hallway.” He glanced at Aaravos, “Ready?”

“Oh yes.” 

There was that hint of danger Viren saw sometimes, in the way his partner smiled. It wasn’t something he couldn’t spend much time thinking about right then. 

“Let’s go,” the king said, leading their party to the door. Once outside, they could see the security personnel coming down the hallway. Them exiting the office, combined with a severe looking Amaya approaching, alerted “Marcos” that something was up. With the three of them on one side, and security coming towards him on the other, he chose to run towards Amaya and her crew. There were more of them, but Viren guessed the spy had decided to take his chances with them rather than with Aaravos. An interesting choice. 

“Stop him!” Harrow yelled, which prompted the team to draw their guns. “Marcos” ran up the wall and vaulted above them in a move the real Marcos couldn’t pull off. Amaya was the only one still following his trajectory with her weapon, ready to take the shot. 

A streak of lightning shot past Viren and hit the spy somewhere near his hand in mid-jump. Something shattered, the spy fell on floor and the team surrounded him. He was no longer Marcos, but a moonshadow elf of roughly the same build. 

It had all happened so fast that for a moment all Viren could do was stare and try to puzzle it out. The air was buzzing. He turned around to see Aaravos behind him, eyes dimming down. He felt like his brain stalled. “That was lightning,” he said, the implications of Aaravos being referred to as a powerful Archmage dawning on him.

“He’ll live,” Aaravos said. Which was good, for interrogation purposes, but not the point Viren was getting at.

“Your arcanum is The Stars,” he tried again. He had seen Aaravos perform magic before, but it had mostly been small things, like floating books, and annoying him by being clairvoyant. The biggest one had been getting them from one location to the next in seconds, but he hadn’t been thinking enough with his smarter head to ask questions. 

With a tilt of his head, Aaravos confirmed, “It is.” 

Harrow started moving towards the center of action, and Viren wasn’t about to let him go alone, so he followed. They were still having a situation, the magic discussion would just have to wait. 

The elf was lying on the floor, the pieces of his watch scattered around him. With a groan, he rolled over to stare at them, holding his wrist. His eyes found Aaravos.

“You,” he choked out, glaring.

“Would you have preferred a bullet?” Aaravos asked. The other elf didn’t reply. Some of the security team dragged him away, while the rest stayed to look over the scene. 

Amaya was talking to the king, with her second in command interpreting, so Viren took the opportunity to crouch down to get a closer look at the broken watch. Structurally, it was close to the illusion amulets he’d read about, just hidden in the machinery of a wristwatch. 

Aaravos got down next to him, closer than a social distance. “What do you make of it?”

“Well,” Viren glanced at him, determining that his face was too close for appropriate workplace whispering, and turned back towards the pieces. “Looks like we need to make people take off their accessories at the gate, at the very least,” he said. “Good job with the lightning, it was probably the most practical way to both break the illusion and stop him from getting away.” 

“Thank you,” Aaravos said. “Though, I thought you didn’t approve.”

“It’s not that, there’s just been a lot of surprises today, I didn’t know how to react,” he explained. He had been taken off guard for the nth time in so many minutes, some shock was allowed. “I haven’t really given much thought to what you can do, but I guess you don’t have the title of Archmage for nothing.”

“Oh you know, it’s just for mastering the primal sources.” 

“Ah,” was all he could say at first. “That’s, impressive,” he managed after a moment. He felt Aaravos’ hand on his back, making a slow circle. It wasn’t the time or the place to get overly affectionate, but it did feel nice.

“You did well today, too.”

“It’s all in a day’s work,” he aimed for flippant, but instead landed somewhere near flustered territory. 

From behind their huddle, the king called Viren over. The guards were doing various tasks around them, with one coming over to pick up the watch pieces. Viren thought he’d end up having a long day, but instead after he was questioned about what had happened, and had drawn up a list of things to look out for, he was ordered to go home. He was too close to this, and even though he argued that he was their best bet at finding potential infiltrators, unless they hired Aaravos, Amaya stuck to her guns and insisted he sit this one out. Castle security wasn’t a part of his duties. 

Viren waited near where she was talking to Aaravos, in private and at length, in case he needed a ride. It wasn’t just that, Viren also wanted to talk to him, to hash out what had happened. Now that he’s had time to cool down, he wasn’t that angry at Aaravos. Xadia was going too far to disrespects his privacy, and the castle security had taken a hit for it. Though, it wouldn’t be safe to just assume that this was the only time. 

Eventually, Aaravos stepped out of the room he had been holed up in with the head of security. There was something less put-together about him, but the strain on his face disappeared when he spotted Viren.

“I thought you might need a ride,” Viren explained his presence. 

“Let’s say that I do.” Aaravos joined him to walk down the hallway, towards the main entrance. “Where are you taking me?” 

“Back to your place.” He thought it over. “Or, you could come to mine,” he offered. “The kids aren’t at home.” Claudia would be back later in the evening, but they had a few hours. 

“Some peace and quiet for us to have a discussion and maybe a drink?” 

It took Viren a moment to understand what his partner was referring to, to remember what he had said on their picnic, but when he did, he laughed and bumped his shoulder into his. “Not necessarily in the sense you mean, but yes.” 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some smut in this chapter, so be warned (or maybe that's what you're here for, so enjoy?)

On the drive over to his house, Viren realized that Harrow hadn’t gotten to talk to him alone. There had been so much going on and then he’d been made to leave. He wondered what the king would have said about Aaravos. Not that it mattered. Harrow’s approval would be nice, make things easier, but he didn’t need it. Just like he didn’t need the go-ahead from his other coworkers or the people. His children liked Aaravos and that’s what mattered.

He glanced at his partner. Aaravos had folded his suit jacket on his lap and was looking out the passenger side window. Viren stole a couple more glances, trying to keep most of his focus on the road. He also liked Aaravos.

Even though Aaravos kept things from him he shouldn’t. 

They arrived. As expected, no one was there, the house was quiet. It looked tidier than him or the kids had left it that morning; the housekeeper must have come by while he was away. Viren debated taking Aaravos up to the office but decided that it was too formal. While the conversation he wanted to have was about what had happened at work, it wasn’t about work. Viren didn’t want talking to Aaravos start to feel like it was a part of his job. 

He lead them to the couch, loosening his tie as he walked. “Do you actually want a drink?” he asked. 

“Maybe later,” Aaravos replied while taking a seat. “I take it you brought me here to talk about what just happened.”

Deciding to follow Aaravos’ example and leave getting a drink for later, Viren joined him. “The guard,” he began. “When did you figure it out?”

“While we were standing in the hallway.”

Viren stared at a spot over Aaravos’ shoulder, thinking. He saw the other shift to sit closer and turn more towards him.

“If there had been a way to pull you aside, I would have.”

The confession got Viren to return his attention on Aaravos again. He wanted it to be true so much the desire to just believe his partner took him by surprise. Still a little wary, he reiterated, “So you wanted the elf to hear what you had to say, and you didn’t trust Harrow.”

Looking sincere enough, Aaravos nodded, “I wasn’t sure if he knew.” 

It was nice, to be on the same page. A smile slipped on his face even though this wasn’t meant to be a heartwarming conversation. “It crossed my mind, too, but I don’t think he’s that underhanded.”

Aaravos smirked, teasing, “He has you for that.”

“And yet here you are,” Viren gestured at the living room. People didn’t see him as trustworthy, the way they did Harrow. It was almost unheard of for someone to pick him over the king. 

“I’ve come to the conclusion that the king isn’t my type, either,” Aaravos said and Viren took it as an invitation to fish for some compliments. 

“Then what is?”

“I like someone clever and resourceful, who isn’t afraid to reach for his goals and voice his opinions.” 

Pleased with the description and wanting to hide how much hearing it was affecting him, Viren replied with, “Sounds like he could be fussy and high maintenance.”

“He is, to a ridiculous degree.”

“Hey,” Viren protested. If there was more to the protest, he forgot what it was when Aaravos leaned closer, eyes smiling.

“But I like a challenge,” he admitted. 

Viren’s eyes strayed towards his mouth. “You can be very challenging yourself.” They did have something else he wanted to discuss, but he had some trouble remembering what that was. “Magic,” he realized, sitting back a little. “I wanted to ask you about the magic.”

With a sigh, Aaravos let his head fall sideways on the backrest. “I was under the impression that you knew.” It looked suspiciously like he was pouting.

“You’re so needy,” Viren remarked with a fond eyeroll. “I knew you were exceptionally good at it, just not in what ways.” He debated the pros and cons of reaching out and decided that the pros won out. Careful at first, he brushed some of Aaravos’ hair back, digging his fingers in deeper when the pout disappeared. “The texts I found didn’t go into specifics, and I guess I just assumed that you were really proficient at Star magic.” There wasn’t a lot of information on what that kind of magic could do. When Viren’s thumb found the base of the horn and paid more attention to it, Aaravos’ eyelids fluttered.

“Mh, it’s not just that one.”

“All six,” Viren mused. “That is quite the feat.” Smiling when Aaravos just hummed in response, eyes closed, he asked, “Feeling good?”

“You may keep petting me and giving me compliments.” He lifted his head off the backrest, enough to give Viren easier access to the other horn. “Get the other side, too.” 

Viren snorted. “So good at magic but so bad at asking nicely.” At that Aaravos looked up at him.

“Please, Viren,” he said, adding to the emotional punch by pleading with his eyes.

The previous plea had been over the phone, and he hadn’t been able to resist then either. “That’s better.” He cleared his throat when his voice came out weak. “It looked like it was easy for you, the spell.” He shifted, getting more comfortable, and started on the other side, sliding his fingers through hair.

Aaravos’ eyes fell back closed. “Fulminis is basic.”

“For people connected to the Sky Arcanum, maybe,” Viren muttered. The things he needed for it were hard to find; the casting in itself wasn’t that complicated. “So, how powerful is powerful, in this case?” 

“So powerful,” Aaravos sighed and leaned his forehead on Viren’s chest, somehow without poking him in the face. It made the angle more awkward, but he kept at it, adjusting to the change. The prolonged contact and coming down from an adrenaline high was making him sleepy, too. 

Viren started shifting position so he could lean back against the armrest and the decorative pillow there. “Come here,” he guided Aaravos to lie down with him. Having his partner’s head a little lower on his torso helped with the angle, and soon, Aaravos’ breathing grew deep and slow. Viren couldn’t keep his eyes open, either.

* * *

According to the clock on his phone, Viren had slept for two hours. It was strange; he wasn’t much of a nap taker. Aaravos was still and quiet, so Viren decided not to bother him just yet. He checked his email and replied to some of them, doing whatever work he could get done from there. 

It wasn’t long before Aaravos stirred. He lifted his face off Viren’s chest, blinking at him. “How long have you been awake?”

“Not long,” Viren replied and put the phone away. “We were out for a while.” It wasn’t the smartest comment ever, but he was distracted. By the way Aaravos’ hair fell over his shoulders and around them, by the twinkling of the freckle like stars. Surely now that he was Viren’s elf boyfriend, Viren was allowed to look. “You’re, um, you’re very pretty,” he said and regretted the choice of words right after they left his mouth. 

Aaravos looked amused. “Thank you. I haven’t heard that in a while.”

Skeptical, Viren asked, “Really?”

“It’s usually gorgeous or beautiful or stunning,” Aaravos listed, eyes crinkling with mirth. “I think ethereal a couple times. Otherworldly.” 

“What about conceited or insufferable?” Viren asked. His insults didn’t faze Aaravos at all.

“Those, too.” 

Again, without meaning to give into it, Viren grinned. He looked away, hid it with a hand and a change of subject, “So you were out like a light, earlier.” 

Aaravos sighed and shifted his weight around before sitting up. “I have some issues with sleeping,” he admitted.

Left feeling cold, Viren also got up. “Like when you called me?” He wanted to reach out and touch him, but the way Aaravos angled his body away signaled a need for space. 

“At some point, I don’t know how far in, I started experiencing hallucinations.”

Viren didn’t have anything particularly smart or sensitive to say to that, so he kept quiet and let Aaravos continue. 

“They were mostly brief flashes of sights and sounds,” Aaravos explained, eyes following the pattern on the carpet. “Sometimes, alone at night, there’s a car going by the shop or people talking outside, and it’s like I’m back there again.” 

“What do you do, those nights?” Viren asked. 

Aaravos looked at him then, from the corner of his eye. “Some nights I wait it out, on some I go stand outside.” He smiled a little, like at a fond memory. “A good thing about living among such a huge concentration of humans, is that there’s always someone wandering the night.” 

“You called me, though, instead of doing either of those,” Viren pointed out. Should he feel special, being chosen over a random stranger?

“I was feeling particularly desperate and brave.” The admission was careful, with Aaravos searching his face for a reaction after. Whatever it was, maybe he found it; he leaned over for a kiss. It was a brief peck, chaste in the way their kisses weren’t, and somehow it touched deeper. 

Feeling desperate and brave himself, Viren chased after Aaravos when he tried to retreat. It wasn’t that there hadn’t been random strangers around when Aaravos had needed one; he had a better option now. Viren wasn’t used to being anyone’s first choice.

Getting closer felt like an urgent matter and the easiest way to accomplish it was to sling a leg over. Once seated, Aaravos pulled him in by the hip, other hand trailing up to undo his tie the rest of the way. Viren was unsure of where to put his hands and settled on Aaravos’ shoulders, from there they ended up in his hair again. 

Aaravos moved from his tie to the shirt buttons. He eased away, from Viren’s mouth to his neck, below his jaw. 

At the first sign of teeth, Viren leaned back, some rational thought breaking through. “That’s ah, that’s too high up.” He wouldn’t be able to cover it with a shirt collar. It wouldn’t be workplace appropriate. 

“Where?” Aaravos asked, breath hitting the hollow of his jaw. 

Viren guided him down, to the base of his throat, near where his collarbones started. “Here,” he offered. It was still pushing the line, but he liked Aaravos’ mouth there too much to care anymore. He arched into it, hips grinding down almost without his say so. Aaravos hummed his pleasure into his flesh, tightening the hold on Viren’s hip, encouraging him to continue.

“Wait,” he breathed, as much to himself as to his partner, before either could get too into it. “Wait, we should relocate.”

Aaravos pulled away enough to speak, “Are we expecting someone?”

“Not right away, but Claudia should be home in an hour or so.” They needed to not be on the couch when she got back. His bedroom door had a lock. A part of him wished that she’d call to tell him that she was spending the night somewhere else, even though he wasn’t in the right head space to talk to his daughter. “Bedroom?” 

“Yes,” Aaravos agreed. 

Separating felt like too much of a hassle, but they managed. Viren shook his jacket off and gathered his tie before heading for the stairs with Aaravos on his tail. It seemed like a much longer journey than it was, from the downstairs living area to the upstairs bedroom. When they got there, Viren realized that aside from a short peek during the house tour, Aaravos hadn’t been inside the room. All his laundry had been taken care of and the sheets had been changed, both things he was intensely happy about. 

He herded Aaravos in and locked the door. It always felt like they were under a strict time constraint, like there could never be enough moments for them to spend together. They couldn’t waste a second. 

As good as his partner looked in everything, Viren hadn’t seen much of him, aside from a few glimpses. The door secure, he went along with Aaravos’ hands on his waist, stepping back in close. It was distracting, to have his shirt pulled out of his pants, Aaravos also on a mission to get to some skin. He managed to start unbuttoning Aaravos’ shirt with shaking fingers. It was part nerves and part anticipation.

While Viren had seen the star through Aaravos’ clothes a few times, this was his first proper look. Careful, in case it wasn’t something he should do, he traced the outer line with his fingers. Aaravos breathed in sharply, but didn’t protest. It had sounded like a good kind of inhale. His assessment was confirmed when Aaravos took his hand and placed it on the star. It was warm, shining through the cracks between his fingers. He looked up, met Aaravos’ eyes, and suddenly the gesture felt more meaningful than just touching someone’s chest should feel.

“Is this okay?” Viren asked, even while his hand was trapped under his partner’s. 

Aaravos glanced down at their hands, the corner of his mouth ticking up. “I’ll allow it.” He gave Viren’s hand a squeeze before letting go.

“I just meant that it’s not, rude or too intimate, or I don’t know.” Frustrated that he couldn’t explain why he was worried about this specifically when they were both angling to touch dicks, he threw his free hand up, “Something!” 

“Viren,” Aaravos said, touched his chin to keep eye contact. “I want you to touch me.”

Viren swallowed. “Undress?” He didn’t mean for it to come out as a question.

“But you like me in a suit.”

That was definitely something he hadn’t been hiding well. “I’ll like you out of it, too.” Stroking the star absently, he recalled a thought he’d had during the meeting. “Do you have elf clothes?” It was harder to form good sentences with so little blood flow going to his brain.

Aaravos laughed, “Elf clothes?”

“Quit it,” Viren said without any anger behind it. “Formal elven wear.” 

“I might have something lying around.” Aaravos took over the unbuttoning process. “Why?”

Distracted all over again, Viren said, “Uh, it’s for um.” 

“For me to wear?” Aaravos prompted, helpful for once. 

“Yes,” Viren replied, more focused on following a star tip down while Aaravos undressed.

“What’s the occasion?”

Why did he have to ask such difficult questions? “What?” Viren asked before shaking himself out of it when his partner moved to sit on the bed, to finish taking off his footwear and pants. “Oh, the clothes, that’d just be for me to,” he trailed off, unsure how the sentence would have ended anyway. Aaravos sat back and looked up at him, and Viren lost interest in talking about some hypothetical future scenario. “Shit, how do you look like that?” he blurted out. 

Aaravos tilted his head, smiling. “What, very pretty?” 

“No,” Viren said, then corrected himself, “I mean, yes.” He looked pretty good for his age, but he was no Aaravos. “You’re not going to let me live that one down, are you?”

“It’s recently been joined by ‘elf clothes’,” Aaravos confirmed. 

Trying to gain back a little bit of ground, Viren leaned down to confess, “What if I told you that every time I mess up like that, it’s because I’m so stunned by your beauty?”

“That is flattering,” Aaravos mused, thoughtful and pleased. “Since the first time you saw me, then.”

“Yes, well,” Viren gathered up some more courage. “I was just minding my own business and this gorgeous man showed up out of nowhere.”

“Hm.” Aaravos let his eyes wander, “Why are you still dressed and all the way over there?”

That was a good question. Viren almost tripped over himself trying to get naked and on the bed. He had enjoyed Aaravos’ lap, and Aaravos had seemed to like him there, and also they were on a schedule. They had spent so much of their time talking. 

It was so much better like this. He was still unsure of where he dared to touch, but it was easy enough to forget the nerves and get lost in their kiss and the slow grind. Emboldened, he broke away from Aaravos’ mouth and went on to kiss some of the stars on his shoulder. Aaravos wrapped an arm around his back, leaning his face on the side of Viren’s head. How sweet he was, when they got down to it, didn’t scare Viren anymore; if rational thought had been a thing he was capable of right then, he would’ve explained it away, claimed that it was because it didn’t take him by surprise. Now, he just matched their movements, moaned against Aaravos’ skin.

“Oh Viren,” he spoke into Viren’s ear. It was like a purr, traveling down and making his hips twitch. “It took so long for me to find you.”

Viren lifted his head, nudging Aaravos to get his eyes, brush lips. “Now that you have,” he asked. “Ah, what’re you going to do with me?”

“Anything you’ll let me.” 

As things were, Viren didn’t have the best track record of saying no to Aaravos. “That’s a lot of-,” another pleased sound cut him off, and he decided that kissing was better than talking. He needed something more to get over the edge, so he slipped a hand between them to take hold of them both. It felt gratifying, to have Aaravos moaning against his mouth. 

There weren’t any words after that.

When Aaravos’ hand wandered down to tease his hole, Viren was gone. His strokes faltered, but after breathing through the aftershocks, he was determined to get Aaravos there, too.

Aaravos rolled him on his back. Just the visual of his partner leaning on his elbows, thrusting into Viren’s fist, with his hair cascading around them, was almost enough to get him going again. Viren brought his free hand up to touch his face, traced an imaginary constellation on the way to brush against his lower lip. Aaravos parted his lips and touched his tongue on the pad of Viren’s thumb. It was such a simple gesture, and maybe it wouldn’t have worked on him, done by someone else. But how was Viren supposed to look away? How could he ever want to look at anyone else?

Their eyes met, and Viren knew that Aaravos knew the effect he was having on him. Viren’s face felt warm and at least when Aaravos leaned down to kiss him, he had an excuse to close his eyes, and hide from his feelings for a while. Just focus on the physical. On how both the kiss and his partner’s thrusts got rougher before he tensed and broke away to pant against Viren’s shoulder. It added to the mess on his hand and stomach, but he couldn’t bring himself to care right then. 

After, Viren lay on his back with Aaravos leaning his chin on his chest again, hand petting his side. It was nice, relaxing.

“About the elven formal wear,” Aaravos said, just when Viren was starting to drift, staring at the ceiling. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Viren tried to dismiss the whole thing. It had been a dumb, spur of the moment idea. “Maybe if there’s an actual occasion for it.” 

“I can dress up for you.” His smile widened, Viren could hear it in his voice, “You could tell me how very pretty I am in my elf clothes.” 

Viren rolled his eyes, “Of course. I’m sure you’re very pretty in just about anything.” 

“I am.” With a content sigh, Aaravos settled down. 

The front door opened and shut. There were sounds of someone moving around; Claudia was home. Viren didn’t want her to come looking for him. It had been a while since his last meal and he was starting to feel it, which gave him an additional reason to get up. “I’m going down to the kitchen,” he told Aaravos, glancing at him. “Do you want anything?”

“I want you to stay here with me,” Aaravos replied, a touch bratty.

“I can’t really get that from the kitchen.” Viren got up, though he wasn’t thrilled about moving, either. It forced Aaravos to lift his head and roll over to lean on his elbow. 

“Water, then,” he edited his order. “And a sandwich,” he added. For a moment it looked like he was thinking about pushing for something more, but Viren leaned in for a quick peck before he could say anything.

“I’ll be right back, stay here.” He stopped by the bathroom and threw on underwear, a T-shirt and his robe. 

Claudia was in the kitchen, as he had expected, humming and making herself a hot drink. She spotted her father coming and looked up from her mug. “Hey dad, you’re home early.” Her eyes narrowed, taking in him in a robe, in the early evening hours. “Wait,” she said before realization made her eyes widen again. Looking away, she asked, “Is Aaravos here?”

Embarrassed that it was so obvious, Viren tried to smooth down his hair and tie the robe tighter. “Yes, he’s in the bedroom, please don’t go there. Something came up and I had to leave work early, so um, he came back with me.” Perhaps that was too much information. “Is that alright?” 

“Yeah, yes, it’s fine,” Claudia hurried to assure him. “I mean, I don’t want any details, but you’ve been so much happier, so how could I complain?” 

He supposed he had been happier, was happier. “Good, that’s great.” Deciding that it was time to stop standing in the middle of the kitchen, he went to the fridge to start his sandwich preparations. “You like him, right? He seems fine to you?” Viren checked. 

“Is this the heads up about a new elf dad?” she asked.

“No, no,” he turned to look at her. She was smiling a little, so it was likely that she had been joking. “Not exactly, but he’s going to be sticking around, for a while, and probably spending more time here.” Viren hoped. 

Her smile softened. “I like him, dad, and I’m pretty sure Soren does, too.”

“Good.” He finished the sandwiches, got the water, and placed everything on a tray before escaping back to the relative privacy of his bedroom. Back to Aaravos.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update time! I like this chapter, mostly because I like a little conflict in my fic.

It turned out that Marcos, the security guard whose likeness had been used to spy on them, was alive and well. The fact afforded Xadia some goodwill, but what they had done was still a huge breach of trust. The king and some of their council members and ministers were handling it. Viren had explicitly been told not to get involved. 

The order grated on him. First Xadia spies on a private meeting and then they tell Viren not to do his job. Though to be fair, it wasn’t just Xadians who held the opinion that he shouldn’t be present for the negotiations, it was some of their own people, too. Harrow had been cagey about who had been against it, but he couldn’t overrule the decision. Viren had started to compile a mental list of people he thought it could have been. It was a long list.

Not being allowed to participate in something that occupied the time of so many of his coworkers left him adrift as to what he was supposed to be doing. It was like a vacation, except it made him feel more stressed out and irritated instead of less. 

He tried working, but he was done by noon. Both of his children were out doing their own thing for most of the day, and if he had to come up with a positive, it did give him time to work on magic in peace. He drove out to a reputable shop to restock some things and to place a few orders. The owner chatted with him about how hard it was to keep live bugs in stock in their small storage space and asked about his kids. They had been casual acquaintances for years, and talking to her about Claudia’s magic studies wasn’t that unusual.

But then she said, “You know, that elf you’re seeing? I’ve met him, he’s been here a few times.” 

He hadn’t been expecting to need to talk about Aaravos, though it didn’t surprise him that she knew; everyone did. “He has?” 

“Yup, you don’t forget a face like that.” She wiggled her eyebrows. 

Viren didn’t know how to react. He agreed, but didn’t say anything.

“Anyway, he hasn’t bought much, but we had a lovely talk about small business ownership one time.” She jumped to sit on the stool behind the counter. “Seems friendly enough, though the whole, “ she gestured at her face, “All of him took some getting used to.” 

“I doubt you’re alone in feeling like that,” Viren gave her a polite smile and bid his goodbyes. 

With all his new hated free time, he had finished another one of Aaravos’ books and he still had the one he had borrowed before it. Since he was already out and about, he decided to stop by at home to drop off his purchases and pick up the books before heading to Cosmic Vision. 

There were people there, a group of customers gathered around Aaravos in the middle of the store. Viren maneuvered around them, caught Aaravos’ eye over their heads. He lifted the books in his arms higher and his partner gave him a small smile. He placed the books on a table in a corner and settled down to observe. 

It sounded like Aaravos had done whatever these people wanted and now they were just hanging around to talk to him. The interaction was amicable, though it seemed like Aaravos wasn’t that into it and his eyes kept drifting towards Viren. One of the people on the edge of the group noticed and followed the line of vision. He elbowed his friend who also turned to look. They had a whispered conversation, but didn’t take it as far as to come bother him. 

The people left, herded out by Aaravos who locked the door after them. He arranged the curtains to cover the window on the door before approaching Viren. “This is unusual,” he said as a greeting. 

“I have some free time now that I’m being excluded from the talks with Xadia,” Viren explained, flashing him a bitter smile. 

“I’d assumed that the humans would want you there for your knowledge on magic, and Xadia would want you to slip them information about me,” Aaravos pointed out. They were good points, Viren was impressed. In a logical world, he’d be right.

“My colleagues don’t like acknowledging my magic practice, and I’ve dealt with Xadia enough times that they know I’d just politely tell them to fuck off.” There had been some elves over the years he had had a good working relationship with, but he hadn’t made any friends. He told himself that the reason for that was his zero tolerance for bullshit on their end. “Not to say that it was the right call, but apparently my involvement with you now means more to them than my decades of service.” 

Aaravos stood before him and reached out to run fingers through his hair. “They’re wasting an important asset.” 

He closed his eyes for a moment, some of the irritation draining out. At least Aaravos saw it the way he did. “I found out today that you frequent the same magic shop I do,” he said, opening his eyes to look up at Aaravos. “It’s weird to think that we could’ve ran into each other like that, too. Or I suppose just while I was running errands around here.”

“Or through your work with Xadia,” Aaravos added, his hand drifting to Viren’s cheek. “Even if your daughter hadn’t brought you to me, something else might have.”

Viren raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying we were destined to meet?” he asked. “You are such a sap.” It was starting to grow on him.

“Perhaps.” Aaravos bent down to kiss him, and Viren leaned up to meet him, to touch the edge of his cape. 

When they parted, Viren said, “I brought your books back.” 

“I can see that.” He glanced at the books on the table. “Do you want more?”

“Yes.” Viren still had the cape edge between his fingers, just for the sake of some contact. And he had accused Aaravos of being sappy; if Viren from a few months ago saw him now, he would laugh in his face. 

Pleased, Aaravos took the hand on his cape. “You could read here for a while, since you’re not in a hurry.” 

It was tempting, even though he hadn’t planned on staying. “What about your customers?” He didn’t feel like being on display, and even less like answering any invasive questions.

“You can stay in the back,” Aaravos offered. 

“Alright,” Viren agreed. “For a while.” He could browse the book selection in peace and maybe get to pick the book he borrowed. 

“Good.” Aaravos pulled him along by the hand, “Come.” 

“Are you going to tell me to sit and stay, too?” he asked, with no small amount of edge. “How about ‘fetch’?” If he had to pick his least favorite thing about Aaravos, he’d say that it was the bossiness. He saw the corner of Aaravos’ mouth quirk up before he brought Viren’s hand up to it and kissed the back.

“Forgive me. I didn’t mean it to sound like that.” He unlocked the door to the back and was already forgiven before they made it through.

“Isn’t ‘forgive me’ also a command?” Viren wondered out loud.

“I see it as more of a request.” He let go once they were by the chairs and the fireplace. “Now, if you’d be so kind as to take a seat, while I go see who’s about to come through the door.” 

“Thank you, I think I will.” But first, he went over to the shelves and Aaravos left him to it. The choice was difficult, and some of the books were too high for him to reach, but he decided on one about illusion magic, since it was relevant to his life. He wondered if Amaya, or someone on the security team, would read up on it, too, if he made some notes. He doubted it.

The thought sucked the fun out of studying. He got up and walked over to the window. The view was nice, even though he had his suspicions about it really being there. At a less tomoullous time, he would have loved to try and make Aaravos tell him all about it. Why had he even come here? If he just wanted to brood, he could’ve done that at home. 

The door opened, but he didn’t turn to see Aaravos return. His eyes were fixed on the castle in the distance. They could at least keep him updated on what was going on, but if no one told him willingly, he knew a couple people he could get to slip up. They were conveniently on his list of those who had voted him out of the negotiations. 

“You seem troubled,” Aaravos said from somewhere behind him. 

“When you told King Harrow that you’d side with Katolis if it came to that, did you mean it?” Viren asked. It wasn’t likely to; they had a history of conflict, but they also had one of smoothing things over and letting them go for the sake of keeping peace. 

“That’s unlikely, isn’t it?” 

“Yes,” Viren admitted, peeved at not getting a straight answer right away. “But did you mean what you said?” He turned to see Aaravos standing about an arm’s length away. They studied each other for a while.

“I’d side with you,” Aaravos told him. It eased something inside him that had been coiling ever since he’d learned that his colleagues were so eager to cast him aside. 

* * *

He ended up staying for lunch and then for some actual reading. It was hours of Aaravos leaving to take care of customers and coming back to talk or to just sit with him. He was gloomy about his work situation, but he had to admit to having an easier time dealing with it. He still kept checking his work phone for any updates; there weren’t any. 

“How long do you expect this to go on?” Aaravos asked, looking at him past his own book. He had closed Cosmic Vision and joined Viren in front of the fireplace. 

Without looking up from his phone, Viren replied, “Depends, sometimes these things take months. I doubt that’ll be the case here, though.”

“Several days, in any case.” 

“Probably.” What was he supposed to do, in the meanwhile? There were a couple things they were meant to be preparing for, and he guessed he could get started on those, but he didn’t feel like taking on anyone else’s workload. Without Harrow having anything scheduled, aside from meetings with Xadia, he didn’t have much going on, either. 

“Do you think you could make time to leave the capital, for a couple days?”

Viren looked up, meeting Aaravos’ eyes. “With you?” It might have been a stupid question, and Aaravos looked like he thought so, too. 

“With me, yes.”

A trip. Spending a prolonged period of time together. The prospect made him both excited and nervous. He put away his phone and closed the book he had had the device on. “Where would we be going?” 

“I let it slip that I haven’t left the city much since I came here, and a friend offered to let me use their summer house. It’s a couple hours from here.” 

The explanation was surprisingly forthcoming. While he found it hard to believe that Aaravos had just accidentally told someone who owned a summer house that he could use time away from the city, it was a tempting offer. Viren hadn’t left the city for other than work reasons in years. “When you say a couple hours, I’m assuming you mean by car.”

“You assume right.” Aaravos sat there, looking at him, waiting. The selling point was getting away for a couple days, spending time alone together. Right when Viren needed it.

“Did you know that getting involved with you would affect my career?” he asked. At this point, the damage had already been done, his colleagues had showed him how little faith they had in him. Breaking things off would look like he was letting Xadia dictate who he could have relations with, and he found that thought just as distasteful as the idea of letting Aaravos go. Aside from whatever feelings he was developing, Aaravos had cunning, foresight, and raw, magical power. He was a valuable ally. 

For a moment, Aaravos seemed surprised by where the conversation was going. He was quick to school his face into something carefully neutral. “I’d say that this is more of a temporary setback than-”

Viren interrupted, “Yes, yes, it’s not going to be permanent and I’m too established in my career for anyone to simply kick me to the curb and all that.” He leaned forward in his chair, “Answer the question.” 

“It’s important for you to understand that the future is not one thing, it’s a combination of several different factors that are in constant motion,” Aaravos started to explain, in his quest to dodge the question. “Sometimes the variables align in such a way that I can make a, let’s say an educated guess, as to what the most likely outcome is.” 

“Fascinating,” Viren said, deadpan. “Still not an answer, though, is it?” 

“I’m telling you that I was never sure that things would happen this way.”

“But did you think that it was likely?” Viren insisted, getting annoyed once again that it was always such a struggle to get Aaravos to answer a simple yes or no question. When Aaravos didn’t say anything in response and just frowned, like the situation was stressful to him, the diva, Viren got up. He placed the book that had been on his lap on the seat and straightened himself out. “Well then, I hope you have a nice trip.” 

Aaravos’ eyes widened. For a moment he just stared as Viren walked towards the door, then he snapped back into the present and chased after him. He grabbed Viren by the shoulders to spin him around to face him. When Viren just glanced at his grip and raised an eyebrow at him, he let go, took a step back. “Wait,” was all he said.

“I’m waiting,” Viren responded. He hadn’t seen Aaravos struggle with keeping calm before, and perhaps he was being more cruel than necessary, but if he had to keep himself hostage to get results, he would. “I don’t have all day.” They both knew he did. “Say your piece and let me leave.” 

“You’re welcome to leave whenever you want, but I’d rather you didn’t,” Aaravos confessed, gearing up for something.

Viren gave him a mean little smile, “You mean right now or ever?” It was a low blow and more of those would mean they’d have a fight on their hands, judging from how Aaravos’ face darkened. Having the upper hand for once was just too enjoyable to not do anything with. 

“To answer your earlier question,” Aaravos said, ignoring the latest one. “I did know that it was likely to have some consequences for you, but I judged them a small price. If you disagree, you may leave, as I said.” 

“But you’d rather I didn’t,” Viren finished. He had made his decision. 

Aaravos dared take back some ground, stepping closer and touching Viren’s cheek. “Stay.” 

Remembering their earlier point of contention, Viren smiled again, but this time it was more gentle. “There it is, I must be psychic.” 

Aaravos mirrored his expression. “It’s more of a request.” 

“I understand that you love your secrets,” Viren said, taking the hand from his cheek into one of his. “But I’m going to need some transparency, going forward. No more deciding for me when the reward is greater than the risk.” 

Looking down at their joined hands, Aaravos promised, “I can try.” 

“Well, it’s a start.” It wasn’t the definite yes that he wanted, but it was a step in the right direction. Now all he needed was for Aaravos to demonstrate that he meant it and they’d be well on their way to something better. A relationship that might work. “Get me that book, please,” he gestured at the one he had left on the chair. “I think I’m going to go home, spend some time with the kids.” 

Aaravos looked disappointed. 

Viren rolled his eyes, while thinking that pouting Aaravos was kind of cute. “I’ll come back.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow?” He did have freakishly large amounts of free time now. The suggestion made his partner brighten up again. He thought he saw his ears perk up.

“Yes.” 

“We can discuss that little get-away, if you want,” he offered. He did still want to go. 

“I did bring it up so we could talk about it.” Aaravos did something to get the book to come over and offered it to Viren. “Nothing today convinced me that I want to spend less time with you.” There was a look in his eyes that spoke of some newfound greed.

Viren accepted the book, held it to him. And returned the sentiment, “That’s mutual.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy one year anniversary of The Dragon Prince!

Viren had written a simplified and summarized version of illusion magic basics based on Aaravos’ book and his own previous knowledge. He didn’t have high hopes when he sent it off, and he didn’t get much of a response. The king sent him a short thank you, telling him that they had it handled. It was of little comfort. 

Good thing he didn’t have to stay at home worrying about it. While he wasn’t the type to run away from his problems, this was more of a case of his problems running away from him, so he felt it justified to leave for a couple of days. No one needed him to stay in the city, and he was packing his laptop and work phone, just in case. His talk with Aaravos about going boiled down to him showing up at Cosmic Vision, frustrated anew by his situation, and asking Aaravos when they could leave. 

They were leaving that same night. Soren had promised to spend time at home, with Claudia, and he had also sworn not to invite all his friends over. They both had a strict two friend maximum. 

Packed and as ready to go as he could get, he went to pick Aaravos up. It was two hours in a car, then a long weekend at their borrowed house. Aaravos had offered to eliminate the drive, to get them there through magical means, but Viren had insisted. If it turned out that they couldn’t stand each other for that long, with his own means of transportation, he could leave whenever and trust that his partner could sort himself out. 

Aaravos was locking up when Viren got there. It was getting dark and the lights were off in the shop, which made the glow as he spellcast all the more obvious. With Aaravos’ back to the street, Viren couldn’t make out the runes, but he could still observe the quick and precise moments of his hand. It was interesting to look at, and at least they could spend the weekend talking about magic, if nothing else.

He popped the trunk when Aaravos approached. His partner put his bag in before hoping in. Once he was seated, Viren reached over to guide his head down so their lips could meet. It was like he could feel the remnants of the spell, a hum running through Aaravos and into him.

“Hey,” his voice was rough. “Ready to go?”

“I am,” Aaravos confirmed with only a little mirth, the answer obvious. “I saw you brought your computer.” 

“I don’t actually have that much to do, it’s just in case something unexpected comes up,” Viren reassured him. “For whatever it’s worth, you have me for the weekend.” 

Aaravos frowned at the last bit. “I’m happy you agreed to come, I don’t understand why you’d think otherwise.” 

“I don’t,” Viren corrected. “It’s nothing you’ve said or done, I’m just, just feeling less than amazing about the whole,” he made a vague gesture around him. “The whole thing with work.” 

Leaning over the middle console to bring their foreheads together, Aaravos said, “Then I will help you get your mind off it.” 

It was working; he was distracted. “I have the utmost faith in you.” As nice as it was, they couldn’t just stay there, staring into each other’s eyes like besotted fools. Viren disengaged and turned towards the steering wheel to start the car. “Keep your hands to yourself while I drive.” It didn’t come out as firm and unaffected as he would have liked. 

“As well as other relevant body parts, I assume.”

Viren didn’t look at him, but it sounded like Aaravos was having a bit of fun at his expense. “You assume right.” Among all the other annoyances in his life, it didn’t bother him as it once had. 

They were both silent while Viren navigated through the city. The traffic was heavy with people either making their way home from work, or trying to get in or out of the city for the weekend. It was nerve-wracking, but at least Aaravos kept to himself and didn’t bother him, like he had asked. After what felt like hours, they made it to a road leading out. The street lights became sparse before leaving them in the dark, to find their way aided by the headlights. Other cars were fewer and farther between. 

Viren leaned back on his seat with a heavy breath. When he glanced to his side, he saw Aaravos watching him. “The traffic’s a nightmare,” Viren commented.

“I imagine it would be,” Aaravos said, but didn’t go into the topic further. “Are you at least looking forward to it?”

“To what?” Viren asked, “The weekend?” 

“Yes.”

“Sure,” he said and then realized that he didn’t sound enthusiastic. He didn’t want to make it seem like he didn’t appreciate the invitation. “I haven’t been anywhere not work related in a long time, so this is, it’s nice.” He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. “I suppose I should thank you.” 

“It is partially my fault that you were put in this stressful situation in the first place,” Aaravos spoke, sounding contrite enough to appease. “It’s the least I could do.” 

Viren smiled a wry smile at the night. “Mess things up for me first and then swoop in to save me.” 

“I thought we had agreed that this was a small, temporary setback.” This time, Aaravos’ tone gave away that Viren’s stab had gotten to him. It was satisfying, in some self sabotaging sense, to know he could get under the armor and twist. 

“We did.” He worked on letting it go for a good while; it wouldn’t do to start a fight on the way over. They had a couple days to get to that point. “Sorry,” he muttered, “It’s the stress talking.” 

“I’d appreciate if you didn’t take it out on me.”

When he next looked over at Aaravos, he was staring into the darkened forest they were driving through. At a glance, he didn’t look angry, but then, Viren had trouble seeing his face from his angle. “I, uh, I didn’t come here to fight,” Viren started his admission. “I’m worried that we will, anyway.” He saw Aaravos turn to study him before focusing on the road. 

“There is no need for us to spend every moment together, there’s plenty of room.”

“So you won’t mind if I retreat to a quiet corner to think?” Viren checked. This trip was supposed to be their time to spend together, not his to sulk by himself.

“I mind it considerably less than I do you snapping at me.” 

The tension kept seeping out, leaving warmth in its wake. “Noted.” He turned on the radio and found a channel with no news segments, just “smooth tunes to drive to” as the host claimed. The tunes were fine, the silence between them as they listened was better. It gave him space to exist for a while, with no more pressing matters than reaching their destination. The road was clear ahead, the night was calm. 

* * *

The house, from what he could see in the headlights, had two floors, big windows facing a lake, white walls and some tacky pillars. The light above the door closest to the driveway went on as they approached. He could see a welcome sign with a winky face on it.

“Who is this friend?” Viren asked as they carried their bags through the door. Aaravos had told him that the place would be stocked with food and drink that they were welcome to. Whoever the owner was, they were being very generous. 

“No one you need to worry about,” Aaravos replied, dismissing the whole thing. 

“They wish they were someone I need to worry about,” Viren mumbled as he located the master bedroom. It had a view down to a small pier floating in the lake, and more importantly, all the bedding was midnight blue and luxurious. It clashed with the rest of the room, and while Viren was no interior designer, the sight offended him. “Aaravos?” he called.

“Yes?” Aaravos replied from somewhere in the house.

“Does your friend know you brought me with you?”

“It’s common knowledge that we’re together.” 

It wasn’t an answer to the question, exactly, but the way Viren saw it, whoever this friend was, they had to know Aaravos was taken. So he let it go, “I think I’m going to turn in early.” He put his bag on the bed, going through it. Sorting himself out was easy enough even in a strange environment. In the meanwhile, Aaravos was puttering around the house, doing whatever he was doing. When he showed up, Viren had wrapped himself in the sheets, facing the window. The pier lights had turned on and he could see them reflected on the water. 

Aaravos placed a mug on the nightstand on Viren’s side before rounding the bed to sit on the unoccupied space behind him. 

“What’s this?” Viren asked without looking over at Aaravos.

“It is a hot drink inside a mug.” 

He didn’t make a move to take it, frowning at the lights. On an average day, he wouldn’t be about to sleep; he’d be working on something, whether it be his actual job or magic. Right then he just felt tired. 

After a while, Aaravos asked, “Do you wish to be alone?” 

“No,” Viren sighed and sat up, fought with the sheet a moment before settling against the headboard. He took a proper look at Aaravos for what felt like the first time since they had left the capital; he was still and patient, leaning his shoulder on a spot near Viren. Stunning as ever. Viren faced away, “Thank you, for the drink, and the mug.” Feeling vulnerable and disliking it, he wished Aaravos would say something witty and mean so they could bicker. 

“The drink is for helping you sleep,” Aaravos said, and added with a small upward tilt of his mouth, “The mug is for helping you drink.”

“You think of everything,” Viren replied, with a slight smile of his own. He tried the drink, it was good. Warmth seeped into him, through the mug and with every sip. “What’s in this?”

“It’s a simple herbal drink.” Aaravos looked past Viren and out into the night. “I make it for myself sometimes.” 

Because he understood the implications, Viren didn’t say anything, just kept draining the mug bit by bit. Around halfway through, he started to feel more relaxed, like he might be able to fall asleep after all. “Usually, when I can’t sleep, it’s because there’s so much to do,” he admitted, the drowsiness making his tongue loose. “Now, it’s more about there not being enough, there’s nothing I can do, that I can think of, that’d make a difference, and that’s,” he paused for another sip. “That’s so foreign, to me.” 

“Sometimes the best thing to do is wait. Give yourself time.”

“I don’t think time will fix my colleagues’ low opinion of me,” Viren muttered. He drank more so he wouldn’t say anything with more venom; Aaravos was trying to help and he was doing a good job, all things considered. 

“It might,” Aaravos shrugged. “In any case, your king appreciates your input, perhaps especially when you disagree with him.” He smirked, nudging Viren with his shoulder, “And you are so excellent at arguing.” 

Viren couldn’t argue that he wasn’t. “I’m flattered.” Despite his sarcastic tone, hearing some praise from someone whose opinion he cared about meant a lot. He smiled into the mug, hiding the sudden uncharacteristic shyness. “Thanks, really, for saying that.” 

“No need to thank me, you’ve proven yourself to be a world-class arguer time and again.”

With an amused huff, he pushed sideways against Aaravos, jostling them both. “Not that part, you dick.” A yawn cut off any further insult. It felt like whatever was in the drink was working its magic. From the corner of his eye, Viren saw Aaravos’ smirk soften.

“You should rest,” Aaravos said, taking the now empty mug from him. “Tomorrow’s a new day.”

“Aren’t you going to sleep?” Viren asked while getting back under the covers, lying down. When Aaravos bent down to kiss his forehead, he closed his eyes and tilted his head into it

“In a moment.”

He fell asleep, curled up again, face towards the lake. After an undetermined amount of time, the bed dipped and Viren woke, but only just, to Aaravos wrapping his arms around him. 

* * *

The sun was high in the sky when he woke up next. At some point during the night, he must have turned to sprawl out on his back for when he opened his eyes, squinting at the sunlight, he saw Aaravos leaning over him. His partner’s skin looked lighter in the morning, his eyes soft.

“Good morning,” Aaravos said, brushing back Viren’s sleep-messed hair.

For the first time in his adult life, Viren felt rested and like he could stay in bed. He smiled up at Aaravos, “Morning.”

“I take it you slept well.”

“I did,” he confirmed, and then without thinking, added, “I need you to spend the night with me more often.” He could do with a good night’s sleep every day for the rest of his life, but he’d settle for a couple of days a week. 

When his words and thoughts caught up with him, he froze. Aaravos’ hand stopped where it had been going through his hair.

“What is it?” Aaravos asked. 

“Nothing,” Viren replied and sat up. “It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.” He cringed at his own see-through lie, and Aaravos definitely noticed, following his movements with a careful gaze as he got up. Viren thought that he might somehow just know what had gone through his head, even though as far as he knew, mind-reading wasn’t one of Aaravos’ many talents. 

“Viren,” Aaravos spoke before Viren could run to the bathroom to regroup. Viren stopped in his tracks and turned back to face him. When he held out his hand, Viren took it and let himself be pulled towards the bed. Once by it, eyeing Aaravos warily, he tried to hide how nervous he was. Aaravos made it much easier by stroking his hand with a thumb. 

“I’d love to spend the night, as often as possible.” Aaravos smiled, at the private joke he apparently had with himself, “For the foreseeable future.” 

Viren swallowed, feeling warm and overwhelmed. “I’d like that,” he admitted, voice small. “But you should know,” he started, looking down at their joined hands. “Or I guess you might already know, based on yesterday and, um, other times, that I can be, I’ve been told by, people, that I can be very intense and difficult,” he managed. Raising his eyes, he met Aaravos’; they were more affectionate than he knew how to deal with. 

“I like intense, we can work on the difficult.” 

Viren wanted to either kiss him or run away. He thought, frantically, that because he hadn’t brushed his teeth yet, he should first run away and then come back for the kiss. It wasn’t a plan he was sure he could execute. “I need to brush my teeth,” he said.

Aaravos looked like he was trying hard to hold in a laugh. He bent his head, shoulders shaking before he got a hold of himself enough to face Viren again. “That is the most romantic thing you have ever said to me.” 

Embarrassed, Viren hid his face with his free hand. “I’m so sorry, I’m just,” he wasn’t sure. “It’s a big step we’re talking about, and I just woke up, but I mean, I do like you, a lot.”

“But do you like like me?” Aaravos grinned up at him, enjoying this far too much. 

Holding back a laugh of his own, born out of mortification and the fact that he had started to find Aaravos being kind of an asshole hilarious, Viren lowered his hand to just cover his mouth. He dared a glance at his partner, “I do. I like like you. You’re good to me, when you’re not being such a jerk.” 

“So you have a crush on me?”

“Stop it, already,” he scolded, but there wasn’t that much heat behind it. The light back and forth made the emotional weight of what they were confessing to easier to bear.

“Not before you admit it,” Aaravos pressed, playful and still radiant even in the sun.

With a roll of his eyes, Viren said, “Yes, I have a huge crush on you.”

“Be still my heart,” Aaravos put a hand on his chest in a mock scandalized way, before sobering up. He rose up on his knees on the bed, guiding Viren’s hand to his cheek. 

Viren leaned in and stopped. “I might be gross, right now.” He didn’t care anymore, he wanted his kiss. Out of consideration for his partner, he started to back off.

Aaravos placed a hand to the back of his head, carding through the short hair there, and brought him back to where their lips were brushing. “Don’t worry about it,” he murmured. “Just be still, my heart.” 

The different connotations didn’t make him obey, but to press into the kiss first, open-mouthed and pliant. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey again, looks like chapter 14 will be the last chapter, so only a couple more to go! Beta'd as always by the dedicated thenovicewriter. This chapter contains light smut.

He had been sitting on the pier for hours, staring out to the lake. Aaravos had wandered into the surrounding woods, to be outside in nature, which was a desire Viren didn’t share. The pier was fine. Sitting there was enough nature for him.   


A couple of his coworkers had asked him to get started on something or other while they were preoccupied with Xadia. With no small amount of satisfaction, he had let them know that he was taking time off and couldn’t possibly be bothered. They’d just have to do it once they were done with their important elf business; he was busy with his own.

The thing was, he wasn’t that busy. He spent time with Aaravos, but it wasn’t a strain on him the way he had feared it could be. They had read, and talked about magic at length, and they’d had some arguments that Viren saw as business as usual. It was less fighting and more two people, who could both be snide and stubborn, interacting. And some of the arguments had ended with them fooling around, so he couldn’t complain. 

It had been a while since he had felt invested in someone outside his immediate family. The thought had crossed his mind, that he could be content spending his days like they had spent them at the borrowed house. Just add his kids and work into the mix, and he could see it being his life. He could buy property outside the city, they could have a second house of their own, they’d take the kids there, and if he ever had grandchildren…

And all through his imaginings of grandkids running around, Aaravos was also there. It was scary, and it seemed impossible that it’d be something he could have, and he was getting ahead of himself. They had only just talked about spending more time at each other’s places and maybe in the vaguest terms about moving in together. It was way too early to think about the rest of his life. 

Work was a thing he’d need to get back to, and then he’d have less time. Viren didn’t want to think about it right then; this was his time to try and relax. It haunted him, the scheduling nightmare he suspected that was to come. 

There was movement next to him. He startled out of his thoughts, but it was just Aaravos, back from his nature walk. He had been so deep in thought that he hadn’t heard his partner walk down the pier. 

Aaravos sat beside him. “Did I startle you?”

“A little,” Viren admitted, easing his shoulders down from his ears. His attention went to Aaravos’ horns; there was a small bird sitting on a prong. “Who’s your new friend?” 

“Just someone who decided to come along for the ride.” When Aaravos reached a hand back, the bird flew to sit on his finger instead and stayed there for the journey towards his lap. 

“Cute,” Viren said, dismissive. As much as he didn’t care about this particular bird, it made an interesting scene together with his partner, as Aaravos sat there, hunched over to pet the tiny thing. The bird wasn’t even the size of a fist, yet it didn’t look worried that anything bad would happen to it. The image tugged at his heartstrings. “You could crush it without any effort,” he commented.

Aaravos glanced up from where his finger was stroking the bird’s head. “That’s true for a lot of things.” He shot Viren a smile before raising his hand to the sky and watching the bird fly away. Viren observed him with a raised brow for a moment, waiting to see if he’d elaborate. When he didn’t, Viren shrugged it off and turned back towards the lake. It was calm, and now that he was paying attention, he saw the sun start to set behind the treetops. 

“I didn’t even realize that I just wasted a day out here,” Viren commented. He stretched out his stiff limbs, preparing to get up. 

“Did you sit here the whole time I was away?” Aaravos asked.

“Pretty much.” It had been an unproductive day. “I got lost in thought.” When he stood up to leave and go do something, Aaravos got up with him to follow.

“Work related thought?” 

They made their way up the pier, back towards the house. “Yes,” was all he said on the matter. Aaravos didn’t need to know about his dumb daydreams. 

“I don’t think that’s good for you.”

Viren looked up at him, saw his concerned frown. “You don’t need to worry, I’m fine.” He didn’t know for a fact that he was, but he’d had stressful patches in his life before; he had lived through all of them so far. And it wasn’t so much about being stressed about work anymore, as it was about concern over his intense infatuation. “There’s still tonight and most of tomorrow to unwind.” 

Aaravos sighed, “You’d need a month, at least.”

It was Viren’s turn to frown, but not in concern. “I don’t have a month.” 

“I know. It’s merely wishful thinking on my part.” 

A month was nothing compared to the years Viren had daydreamed about, but it was still a significant amount of time. “You mean, a month for you to help me unwind?”

With a wicked curve to his mouth, Aaravos replied, “Ideally, but we can make the most of just tonight.” 

“I’m sure you’ll do great.” He walked a little closer for a few steps, long enough to brush some of the longer strands back behind Aaravos’ shoulder. “Work’s going to get crazy after the negotiations are done anyway, so I won’t have that much time to see you.”

Aaravos gave him an unimpressed look, “I’m glad your reasons are so practical.”

“You know I’m not romantic,” Viren defended. “That’s more your thing” They had reached the house, the lake behind them reflecting the orange hues of the sky.

“I was going to romance you,” Aaravos said while holding the door open for him. “Now I’m thinking that I’ll just leave condoms and lube on the nightstand and let you figure it out.”

Viren entered and said over his shoulder, “Honestly, that would work on me, coming from you.”

The last part got a tiny smile from Aaravos. The main living area had various comfy chairs surrounding a table. On the table, a previously empty decorative vase was filled with flowers and other plantlife Viren recognized from his magic studies. 

Aaravos gestured at it, without much fanfare, “I brought you flowers.”

They had practical uses, and effort had been put to arrange them to complement each other. Viren touched one of the flowers, smiling. “I appreciate the gesture.” When he looked up, he saw Aaravos staring at him and felt a little flustered under the undivided attention. “You don’t have to go through all this trouble, but I like that you’re willing to.” 

“It’s no trouble.”

Much to his embarrassment, Viren’s stomach voiced its protests right then. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, too preoccupied with his thoughts. “Uh, sounds like it’s dinner time,” he said, brushing past Aaravos to get to the kitchen. “Are you hungry?”

“I could eat.”

After a while of watching Viren reheating food, Aaravos asked, “Didn’t you ever cook for your children?”

“Not really,” Viren replied, his back to where Aaravos was sitting, keeping an eye on their dinner. “I hired help, to watch them, do the cooking, things like that.” He had been busy, even back then. Sometimes, he thought about all the growing up he never got to see his kids do, but his work had contributed to them having a safe place to grow up in. It felt justified. 

They ate and talked about nothing until the sun disappeared behind the horizon. The forest around them grew dark, the trees looming over the house. It was silent outside apart from the occasional rustle in the underbrush or the trees above. 

The conversation died down as they both looked out the window and into the dark. The sky was clear, Viren could make out some constellations obscured by the treetops. He glanced over at Aaravos to see him looking up at the stars, a faint smile on his face. He was at his most beautiful at night, Viren thought, studying the patterns on his face instead. It wasn’t long before Aaravos noticed that he was being stared at. It was as though the attention made him shine brighter.

“It is getting late,” he said.

“I’m not tired,” Viren replied, getting up to gather their kitchenware to put it in the sink to soak. He wasn’t in the mood to do dishes, and he doubted Aaravos was either. “We could move to the bedroom, still,” he said over the sound of running water, and when he turned, Aaravos had gotten up, eyes half-lidded as he crowded him.

“This is our last night here,” Aaravos spoke into the scant distance between them.

Pleased with having his personal space invaded, Viren agreed, “That’s right. I think you mentioned making the most of it?”

“I did.” A slow grin formed as Viren kept glancing at his mouth. “We’ll get the full eight hours of sleep and wake up refreshed to the new morning.” 

Viren let out an exasperated breath and headbutted him lightly. “If that’s what you want.” 

“It isn’t,” Aaravos admitted, lips brushing Viren’s.

“Then come on.” Viren slipped from where he had been leaning against the sink, to back away towards the door. He held his hand out, and Aaravos took it, letting himself be pulled along, through the living space and into the bedroom. 

Once by the bed, Viren got on and led his partner down with him. Aaravos caught himself with his arms so he wouldn’t land on Viren, that equal parts endearing and infuriating smile on his face as he settled between Viren’s legs. 

“Eager,” Aaravos grinned down at him.

Knowing that Aaravos was right, Viren shrugged, “Maybe I just want to lie back and have you do all the work.” He was joking, but the words reminded him of what Aaravos had said to him on the field outside the city, all that time ago. “Relax and trust you to take care of me.” It raised some questions about whether or not Aaravos had known that this was how things were going to play out between them. Maybe he had made an “educated guess”, maybe it was all a coincidence. 

Aaravos studied his face with a curious head tilt. “Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Trust me.” 

It was a good question, and the honest answer was, “I trust you enough.” He trusted that no immediate harm would befall him, that Aaravos’ intentions towards him were good, but there was so much he didn’t know. 

“Perhaps that’s wise,” Aaravos said and leaned down to kiss him. It distracted him from his racing mind, to just focus on the physical; on touching and being touched. On getting to more and more skin until the clothing barrier between them was gone. While Viren was busy trying to make a mark show on Aaravos’ neck, his partner fumbled for a pillow.

“Do you even bruise?” Viren asked, frowning at the lack of evidence for his work.

“Not as visibly as you.” Aaravos touched the base of Viren’s throat, where the skin had faded back to its pale color. “I can still feel it.” He ran his fingers over the barely-there mark forming on his neck. “It’s very distracting.” 

“Well, at least I have that,” Viren muttered. He couldn’t be irritated for long when Aaravos kissed the corner of his mouth.

“You’ve made a mark on my heart.”

He rolled his eyes, “You’re already between my legs, that’s unnecessary.” Despite his huffing and puffing, it was sort of nice to have sweet nothings whispered to him. “But you may continue.” He felt his partner smile against his cheek, lifting his hips so Aaravos could slip the pillow under them.

“I have met countless beings, but none quite like you,” as requested, Aaravos continued to speak in low tones, working slick fingers into him. “You appeared just when I needed someone to ground me in this life again, and stole all the attention and affection I still had to give.” 

It was more poetic than Viren would have put it, but he echoed the sentiment, pushed back on Aaravos’ fingers with a moan. “Yes, just like that.” He wasn’t sure if he was agreeing with what Aaravos was saying, or with what he was doing. It didn’t feel like it mattered. 

“You carved a space inside of me and filled it with you,” Aaravos spoke into his ear and started the slow slide inside. Viren held onto him, breathing hard, not in pain just overwhelmed. “And I welcomed the intrusion.”

“Oh,” Viren whispered and they both just breathed for a while. “Aaravos, I,” he started but couldn’t finish so what he said instead was, “Move. Please, move.” He shifted his hips, and Aaravos responded to his plea, starting slow. After, Viren’s vocabulary narrowed down to Aaravos, please and yes, or some combination of the three. Above him, his partner seemed just as lost, moaning and muttering words Viren couldn’t understand. He could feel the end was close, with every push and pull. It felt like he really could die, a little, amplified by how Aaravos grabbed him behind one knee to shift the angle. Viren’s voice might have done something undignified that he’d deny later. One of his hands found Aaravos’ horn, the other the headboard, and he held on for dear life. 

It came to a head with both of them shaking and holding each other tight enough to bruise.

* * *

The departure was bittersweet. Their days at the house had been enjoyable, but Viren suspected that getting some time to regroup and gather his thoughts without Aaravos there, was just what he needed. He also needed to get back to work before not doing anything drove him insane. 

Harrow had messaged him about wanting to meet, to try and get back on track once everything was sorted. It was good to be anchored back to his normal life again. As much as he had loved trying to have some non-stressful fun with his partner, being carefree wasn’t in his nature. He needed to work, to be kept occupied. An argument could be made that he had been working on his relationship, but that made Aaravos sound like just another project. 

They bid farewell to the house and drove back to the city. It was late by the time they arrived at Cosmic Vision; they had waited to leave at the last possible second. “I’ll call you, or invite you over,” Viren told Aaravos once parked. “I’ll work something out.” 

“If you aren’t sick of me yet,” Aaravos said, and couldn’t be more off.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he admitted. It got a genuine smile out of Aaravos, made Viren feel like smiling, too. “Go, before I take you home with me.”

“I wouldn’t want that.” 

Viren rolled his eyes at the sass. “Get out of my sight.” Aaravos just laughed at his feigned annoyance, stole a kiss, and hopped out of the car. The exchange left Viren reeling for a couple seconds before he got his wits back enough to start the car and drive home. 

Both of the kids were at home, hanging out on the couch. Claudia had a book and her phone, while Soren just had his phone. They looked up when Viren strayed in on his way to the stairs. 

“Hey, dad. How was your trip?” Claudia asked.

“Yeah, have fun with Aaravos?” Soren piped up, too, before going back to looking at his phone. His whole manner struck Viren as more gloomy than usual, but he wasn’t about to get into it right then.

“The trip was fine, I had a good time,” Viren replied. The bag on his shoulder was feeling heavier by the second; he needed some rest. “I see you haven’t destroyed the house.”

“We told you we wouldn’t,” Claudia said, glancing over at her brother with a frown. Whatever was bothering Soren, she could probably sort it out. 

“I’m going to turn in. Don’t stay up too late.” With that, he left for his bedroom. 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting later than I meant to but such is life.

Viren’s meeting with the king had been scheduled for the afternoon. He arrived at the castle with time to spare, passed the beefed up security, and used the time left to acclimate to being back at work. 

While things between them and Xadia were tense, and at a standstill from what Harrow let Viren in on, he seemed optimistic. They talked schedules at first and at length before it became clear that it wasn’t just a meeting about getting back on track. It doubled as the talk Harrow had wanted to have with him, back when he had first met Aaravos. 

“I didn’t notice anything at first, but when I thought about the conversation later, I realized that he hadn’t told me anything I didn’t already know,” Harrow was saying, crossing his fingers on the table and leaning forward. “Don’t tell me he doesn’t come across as a little shady, to you.” 

“He does,” Viren had to admit. “But I don’t think that means that he’s out to harm the kingdom. There’s a difference between being secretive and being malicious.” He might not be unbiased when it came to Aaravos, but as far as he knew, his partner just wanted to live a normal-ish life away from whatever had happened thousands of years ago. At least for the time being. 

“It’s not just the kingdom I’m worried about.”

The conversation was going to places Viren wasn’t comfortable with; mixing personal and professional life had been a relationship ender, in the past. “Communicating with him is a challenge sometimes, but we’re fine. It’s not like I’m sharing state secrets, in any case.” 

“I don’t want to stick my nose into your personal business if you don’t want me to,” was Harrow’s unfortunate choice of words. “Just be extra careful.”

The time to be extra careful had long passed, he was in it now, for better or for worse. “You don’t need to worry about me.” 

“Right.” The king sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Now that that’s settled, I need you to attend a thing for me while I’m tied up in this Xadia business.” 

“A thing,” Viren repeated.

“They’ve finished enough of the Old Castle renovations to host a party. Make nice with some foreign dignitaries, have a drink, bring a plus one,” Harrow explained. “I think I know who you’re going to bring, just don’t cause too much of a scene.” 

Viren snorted. “If I bring him, a scene will just, sort of make itself around him.” He knew the to-do Harrow was talking about; he’d helped organize it before other things had forced him to rope someone else to handle it. “But I’ll see what I can do.” 

“I will permit a small scene,” Harrow said, face mock serious. Viren felt a stab of nostalgia for the time they had been closer friends. 

“Is that all?” he asked, ready for the meeting to be over. 

“That is all.” 

* * *

Aaravos wasn’t hard to talk into coming with him. All Viren had to do was go to Cosmic Vision after work and show him the invitation.

“I haven’t been to a party in years,” his partner said, smiling at the official invitation. Viren had no idea if, when Aaravos said “years”, he meant two or three, or several thousand.

“I wouldn’t get too excited, these things can be pretty boring.” If he could choose whether he went or not, he’d choose not going. He might need to make an appearance for work reasons, but he didn’t have to have fun. “Do you think you’ll be capable of keeping a low profile?”

“You should know me better than that by now.” The look on Aaravos’ face was of a person who didn’t know what keeping a low profile meant. At least one of them was happy to attend. 

“You’re right, dumb question.” The good mood was contagious, and while he still wasn’t glad he was going, at least he was going with someone whose company he enjoyed. He took the invitation back and placed it inside his briefcase. “It’s still a few days away, so if you need time to figure out what to wear and-,” he stopped when he saw Aaravos’ smile turn mischievous. “What?” 

“Would you count this as a special occasion?” Aaravos asked. Viren was slow to answer, suspicious about where this was going.

“I suppose I would,” he said, after thinking it over. 

The grin widened. “In that case,” Aaravos approached, smoothed down Viren’s tie, “I know exactly what to wear.”

It dawned on Viren. “You mean-?”

“Elf clothes, yes.”

He frowned at the stab. “As long as it’s appropriate.” 

“It covers everything it needs to,” Aaravos assured him. 

To Viren that sounded like it was somehow revealing. He couldn’t help the downward sweep his eyes made, imagining what it might look like. “Uh,” he said. “If it’s formal attire as dictated by your culture, it’d be insensitive to tell you not to wear it,” he managed to continue and sound somewhat intelligent. It could cause a bigger than a small scene, but maybe a medium scene would be worth it. 

“It’s settled then.” Aaravos took a step back just as the bell on the door chimed, his gleeful expression fading into polite curiosity. The client paused at the door, wide eyes glancing between them.

“I can come back later if um,” she offered, “If it’s a bad time?”

“There’s no need. Please,” Aaravos gestured towards one of the chairs by the table with the crystal ball on it. She walked over to it, clearly trying not to stare at them. 

Viren addressed his partner, keeping his voice down, “In case we don’t see each other before the thing, I’ll come pick you up.” 

“Try to make time,” Aaravos replied and took his hand, gave it a squeeze. Viren looked over at the woman; she was sitting with her back to them, so he made a judgment call and went in for a brief touch of lips. 

“I’ll try,” he promised as they parted. “Bye.” The door chimed again as he walked through it. 

* * *

Viren failed to make time to see Aaravos before the party. He used that to excuse the shock to his system it was to see him in full elven finery.

The layers Aaravos wore didn’t cover one-third of his chest and most of his legs. Some of the fabric that did cover things was sheer. The outfit was all flowy blue and purple material and golden accessories. Viren’s eyes finally made their way up to where a headpiece pushed Aaravos’ hair off his face. He was smirking, the smug beautiful bastard. 

“You look great,” Viren somehow managed to say without embarrassing himself too badly. “It’s all very, um,” he trailed off. Aaravos looked like he had leaped out of the pages of a storybook, one filled with legends of great men and women of old, warriors and mages. Viren forgot sometimes that that was what Aaravos was, even in his well-worn work getup and casual human clothes. Ancient and powerful. And his elf boyfriend, somehow. 

Aaravos spread his arms and did a whirl. “Yes?”

“Very,” was what he said, after realizing that he’d just been staring in silence. 

“Pretty?” Aaravos prompted with an ever-present smirk. He stepped closer to run his fingers down Viren’s tie. Viren liked a pop of red, usually, but tonight all his accents were blue and gold. 

“More than.” He needed to get his shit together; he’d seen Aaravos naked, seeing him dressed up shouldn’t be such a big deal. “You’re always stunning but tonight especially so.”

“You’re making me swoon.” There was no swooning, but he did seem pleased with the compliment. “You are very handsome, yourself.” 

“Thank you,” Viren replied, adjusting his tie, self-conscious. “We should get going.” Being fashionably late might be acceptable under the circumstances, but it wasn’t his style. There was already going to be eyes on him, thanks to his gorgeous plus one. They walked to the car arm in arm. 

“I have been looking forward to hanging off your arm and being shown off since you invited me,” Aaravos told him, like sharing a secret. 

Viren arched his brows. “Have you?”

“It’s public knowledge that we’re together but it’s based on unconfirmed rumors,” he explained. “It doesn’t get much more confirmed than this.”

“So it’s me showing you off while you stake a claim?”

“It works both ways, does it not?” He leaned more on Viren, speaking closer to his ear, “Look what I’ve got.”

Flustered that Aaravos had picked up on his other motive, Viren sputtered, “It’s not, I mean I, I also enjoy spending time with you.” 

Aaravos smiled against his ear, “And I with you,” and backed off. “Still, it’s a great opportunity to give people something to talk about.”

“Sure, but I promised Harrow not to cause too big of a scene,” Viren cautioned and watched Aaravos’ smile spread.

“How big is too big?” 

“Whatever you’re thinking is too big,” Viren nudged him with a shoulder, smiling, too.

They had to separate to get into the car. The drive was uneventful. 

When they arrived, some of the guests were chatting in the courtyard, while some walked the hallways to the throne room. On the way, it was hard not to notice that they were being stared at. People stopped what they were doing, took double takes like they weren’t sure what they were seeing was real. It was already a scene, Viren realized before the party had even started. Viren saw the glint in Aaravos’ eyes and knew that he was eating the attention up. 

“You’re enjoying this now,” Viren spoke to him softly, “But wait until a couple hours in and you’re exchanging the same niceties for the twentieth time.” 

“Sounds like you need to think of new niceties,” Aaravos replied, bending his head towards Viren to keep the conversation between them. 

Looking around at the mix of familiar and new faces, Viren admitted, “Well, maybe being here with you will shake things up a bit.” 

“Did you come alone, before?”

As sad as it made him sound, “Yes, or, sometimes I brought Claudia.” 

“How did she like it?” Aaravos continued his line of questioning. 

“The times Harrow was attending with his children she liked it just fine, but she stopped coming when they didn’t,” Viren said. “So you could say that she didn’t, not really.” 

They had to put their conversation on hold when they made it into the crowd in the throne room. Viren needed to greet some people, rub elbows with the important guests. Said guests kept glancing at Aaravos while they talked, curious or intimidated by the elf that was introduced to them as Viren’s significant other. 

At one point, while Viren was deep in conversation, Aaravos wandered off. Viren glanced after him but couldn’t walk out on his conversational partner to follow. He knew Aaravos could fend for himself; it was more the other people that’d have to deal with him he worried about. While Aaravos was capable of being polite, he was also charming and sharp enough to get others to tell him pretty much anything. 

Viren couldn’t stay distracted for long. He was still in the middle of socializing and it took a good while before he could excuse himself. By the time he located Aaravos, his partner had amassed a group of fascinated onlookers he was explaining something to, judging from how he gestured. He looked like he was having a good time. For a while, Viren was content to observe from farther off. The light bounced off Aaravos’ accessories, the stars winking on the exposed parts of him. Even in a room full of people looking their best, he stood out. Brilliant and older than the hall they stood in.

Viren grabbed a couple of drinks and went to him. With a few excuse mes, he made his way through Aaravos’ new admirers, to hold the glass up to him. “Here,” Viren said. 

Aaravos accepted the drink with a smile and a “Thank you.”

Much to Viren’s satisfaction, his partner’s attention shifted from the crowd to him. “You look like you’re having fun,” he commented, sipping his own drink. 

“I am,” Aaravos confirmed. He reached over to brush some imaginary dust off Viren’s shoulder, hand lingering a bit longer than necessary. “It’s been lovely to meet all these new people, and I was hoping you could show me around the castle.” 

“Some of it is still off-limits, but if that’s what you want,” Viren said, his eyes going from Aaravos’ to the gentle touch and back. It would probably be alright to take the hand into his, but he didn’t. 

“It’s from an era of human history I missed completely.” Aaravos’ eyes were wistful as he looked around before addressing his following. “I’m afraid my esteemed partner has come to steal me away.” 

A collective sound of disappointment.

“My apologies,” Viren told them without meaning it, and lead Aaravos away with a hand on his back. The people parted before them. He could hear whispering, but he couldn’t make out the words. “The renovations should be done before the winter,” he explained while they walked away. There were a few people in the hallway, presumably also touring the castle. 

“I think this is a topic you know more of than I,” Aaravos said. “Take me wherever you deem appropriate.” 

“Alright,” Viren acknowledged, thoughtful. “I’d love to show you the library, but it’s empty, currently.” 

“Perhaps we can come back to it later.”

“I’ll give you the full tourist experience.” Maybe next spring, when the castle was back to its full glory and he could get a few days off. “For now, let’s see where we can go,” he got back on track before he could start planning their anniversary. “At the very least, we should find a way up on the wall, the view’s great.” 

Aaravos was watching him like he knew, sharp gaze softening. “I do love a good view,” he said.

Feeling caught, Viren swallowed. His thumb found Aaravos’ spine through the fabric; with a small movement, he traced it. “I do, too.” He felt fortunate, for the chance to see the view with Aaravos, to have his partner here. They had stopped walking. “I,” he started.

“Yes?”

“I, I’m glad you agreed to come,” was what he went with. 

“And I’m glad you thought to invite me.” 

“You were the only one I thought of,” he blurted out and blushed right after. They were standing close, he noticed, an intimate distance. It wouldn’t take much to close. 

Viren moved back. He regretted it when Aaravos looked disappointed. “Just, not here,” he said, apologetic, even when it was without reason. 

With a lopsided smile, Aaravos looked down the hallway. “You say you’re not romantic and then you say things like that.” He shook his head, amused.

“You liked that?” Viren asked, recovering from what he had thought as an embarrassing slip up. 

“Obviously I like hearing how amazing you think I am and how you can’t stop thinking about me.”

“I never said I couldn’t stop.” Though, it took real effort every time. “I do spend a lot of time doing it,” he admitted, more at the wall opposite to Aaravos, who was only looking at him from the corner of his eye. Viren felt out of his depth and like this wasn’t the time or the place to talk about their feelings. When Aaravos next faced him, he was shinier than usual.

“Is there anywhere in the castle you would allow me to kiss you?”

Viren cleared his throat. “There might be a quiet corner somewhere.” If Aaravos liked romantic words and gestures, on the wall, looking over the city in the cooling evening air would be ideal. Suddenly, it was very important that he did this right. He couldn’t just push Aaravos into a closet and get it over with, it had to be good. 

They continued their limited tour, finishing their drinks and leaving their glasses with a passing staff member. The hallways were free to roam, as well as some rooms on the lower floors, but the farther they got from the main hall, the more they ran into fenced-off areas and scaffolding along the walls. Viren told Aaravos relevant bits of information about the castle and the people who had lived there. Aaravos paid close attention. 

After wandering around for at least an hour, they found an exit leading out to the yard. Most of the other guests were indoors, but he could see people climbing the stone steps up to the wall. He sighed, frustrated. “I guess we can still go up there.”

“Still?” Aaravos questioned, eyes honing in on him. 

“Oh, uh, I wanted a moment alone up there, but it doesn’t look like it’s in the cards,” Viren explained before striding over to the stairs, leaving Aaravos to trail after him. 

“It could be, the night is young.”

“I can’t camp out here all night,” Viren complained. “I have to go back indoors and be sociable.”

“What a hardship, attending a high society event at a great historical venue,” Aaravos said, ascending the steps on his heels.

Viren shot him a look over his shoulder. “Yes, there are worse things, this is still work for me.”

“Of which you care about more than anything.”

With a scoff, Viren rolled his eyes, “You sound like my ex-wife.”

They made it to the top; the view was lovely, with the last glimpse of the sun disappearing behind the horizon. 

Voice tense, Aaravos spoke, “Don’t compare me to her.”

“Then stop trying to pick a fight,” Viren shot back while turning to address Aaravos directly. His partner was frowning and looking down at him. Usually, Viren was kind of into Aaravos being taller than him, but not tonight. 

“You are acting like a child,” Aaravos said. “You didn’t get what you wanted and now you’re throwing a fit. Calm yourself.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down,” Viren said, raising his voice. In his peripheral vision, he could see people down in the yard turning to look up, wondering at the source of the noise. There were a few people on the wall with them, somewhere behind him. It was sobering, remembering where he was and who he was with. 

Aaravos put a hand on his hip and followed Viren’s line of sight. “I thought we were trying to avoid causing a scene,” he said, raising an eyebrow at Viren.

“Don’t,” Viren held up a hand. “Don’t start.” He turned his back to the yard to walk closer to the edge. It was true that he cared about his work more than he cared about most things. He had still messed up, accomplished the opposite of what he had set out to do. 

He turned to see Aaravos standing where he had left him, watching him through narrowed eyes. “You’re right,” he began his apology.

“As tends to be the case,” Aaravos put in.

With his best unimpressed look, Viren pushed on, “I am trying to apologize.” 

“Then, by all means, continue.”

“You’re an asshole, but I shouldn’t dismiss you because something frustrates me,” Viren did as he was bid, though his wording was harsher than he had planned. “I’m sorry.” 

“You know you shouldn’t call the person you’re apologizing to names, correct?” Aaravos asked, but he was starting to smile as he said it, so he couldn’t be that upset.

Relieved that he hadn’t ruined things as badly as he could have, Viren confessed, “I really care about you, you dick, and I want you in my life.” He didn’t know what he’d do if Aaravos turned and walked away. Chase after him, was the obvious choice, wallow in misery forever was another. 

Aaravos let the hand fall from his hip, and closed some of the gap between them. “I knew I was in for several petty arguments since the moment I met you.” 

They didn’t get a chance to kiss until much later in the parking lot. After a quick glance around to see most of the parking spots empty, Viren pressed Aaravos against his car. It was perfect. 


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 15 will be a short, epilogue-type thing you'll get in a couple of days. Enjoy the last full-length chapter of the fic!

This time, Viren had been prepared for the rumor mill to start spinning. The feedback he got from people who for one reason or another had his contact information was mixed: it varied between the encouraging “hey, nice catch, happy for you” and thinly veiled disapproval of his life and his choices. He was in the middle of a “rocky love affair” with “a charming piece of arm-candy” that would ultimately end in failure. As anyone who knew Aaravos was aware, he was far more than just a pretty face, and Viren was uncomfortable with all the objectifying language. When he brought it up with his partner, Aaravos laughed and asked him to send him all the articles about them. So instead of reading most of it, he just sent it to Aaravos. At least one of them was amused. 

Not having to go through it himself, and getting sent back the highlights, the good things people had to say, made dealing with it all much easier. He was caught at work, smiling at his phone, reading a quote that described them as “a handsome couple”. 

With how hectic his schedule had become, quick messages were all they had exchanged in the past couple of weeks. Viren was looking forward to an evening by himself when he could at least give Aaravos a call, to hear his voice. It was embarrassing how much he missed him. He knew that all he needed to do was ask his partner to come over as they had talked about, but he wouldn’t have been good company. He worked until he couldn’t anymore and then collapsed on the bed to repeat the process the next day. He knew it wasn’t politically correct to shake a fist in the air and curse Xadia anymore, but he felt the urge every time he stopped to think about it. 

One night, after a trying day, he picked up the phone. He had curled up under the blankets and tried to fall asleep, late as always, but unlike other nights, he didn’t just pass out from exhaustion the moment he was horizontal. So he flicked the reading light back on and hoped that Aaravos was still awake. He fidgeted with the blanket for the couple rings it took for his partner to pick up.

“Viren,” Aaravos said, sounding relieved.

He had never heard his name sound so good. “Hey,” he sighed. “You weren’t asleep, were you?” 

“No, but not for a lack of trying.”

“I see,” he said, frowning in concern. “Looks like I called just at the right moment.” 

“You did.” There was rustling like Aaravos was moving around. “You’ve been busy.”

“It can’t really be helped.” He shifted to lie down more, supported by the pillows. “If it’s any consolation, I wish I wasn’t.” 

“Well, as long as you’re not enjoying it.” 

Viren smiled, and for the first time that day, it was genuine. “It’ll be one more week, I think, and then it should let up.” 

On the other end, Aaravos sighed. “I want to see you.”

“I wish you were here,” Viren admitted. 

“Wish upon a star, it might come true”

Smirking, he spoke, “Starlight, star bright, won’t you sneak into my bed tonight?” The line went dead. “Aaravos?” he tried but got no response.

There was a sudden bright light outside his bedroom window. And then a knock. He got out of bed slowly, approached with caution. He had a hunch about what, or who, he would see, but swinging open the curtains to see Aaravos standing on the part of the roof outside his window was still a shock. 

Viren stared for a couple of seconds as Aaravos waved at him from behind the glass before he realized that he should open the window to let him in. “You’re insane,” were the first words out of his mouth. 

“I might well be,” Aaravos replied and pulled Viren into his arms as soon as he was inside. Viren embraced his crazy partner back, and despite the strange circumstances of their reunion, he was glad that Aaravos was there. 

“So,” Viren started, still holding on. “Is that the secret to getting you to do things?” he asked. “Reciting a poem.”

“Or you could just ask.”

“I didn’t want to bother you,” Viren admitted before extracting himself from the embrace enough to look Aaravos in the eye. “I wouldn’t have been at home or when I was, I was either working or dead tired, so asking you to come over would’ve been pointless.” He thought about his words. “No, not pointless, I’d still get to see you, but me, tired and probably not in the best mood, you know, it’s,” he left it at that. 

Viren was silent for a moment, as Aaravos studied him. “I could have handled it.” 

“You probably could have, but that’s not the point,” Viren argued. He was so tired. “You shouldn’t have to deal with any of it.” 

“I’m not just here for when you’re in good spirits,” Aaravos said, eyes narrowing, he held Viren tighter, “I want all of it.”

Viren’s heart did a silly little dance in his chest. “I don’t know, some of it’s ugly,” he whispered.

Aaravos smiled. “I have ugly parts, too,” he said.

“Yours only make you more interesting to have around,” Viren told him, swept up by whatever was transpiring between them. Maybe in the daylight and fully awake, he wouldn’t have admitted to anything. He felt Aaravos’ hands tighten further on his waist, saw the greedy gleam in his eyes.

“We’re on the same page, then.”

“Oh,” was all Viren could say to that. It somehow hadn’t occurred to him that Aaravos could feel the same way. If he hadn’t been so exhausted, he would’ve tried to start something, but as it was, he was glad when Aaravos broke from their hold to trace a thumb below his eye.

“You haven’t been sleeping,” Aaravos observed.

“No, it’s been more like passing out for a few hours before getting back to work,” Viren confessed. The bed was calling him back, so he went, pulling Aaravos with him. “Come on, you look like you could use some sleep, too.” Now that he looked, his partner wasn’t quite as shiny as he normally was during the night. 

“I’d sleep better with you.”

With a sigh, Viren laid down, Aaravos following his lead and pressing close. “You can come over in the evenings, if you want.” He made it sound like it was a favor to his partner, but he wanted him to say yes and just start coming over already. 

Aaravos made a sound of contentment against Viren’s shoulder and murmured, “I’d like that.”

They were both asleep in a matter of seconds.

* * *

Waking up next to his partner after weeks apart was great. His alarm went off at seven, and he felt Aaravos stir next to him. He turned the alarm off, worming his way out of Aaravos’ hold. “You can stay in bed,” he said while petting Aaravos’ head. 

“No,” Aaravos mumbled into the pillow. “I have to open early.”

“I can drive you if we hurry” Viren offered. He needed to get ready but a sleepy Aaravos was too precious a sight to pass. When they had been on their weekend getaway, Aaravos had woken up before him every morning. Now, his partner lifted his head, blinking at him through bleary eyes.

“What if we don’t?” Aaravos asked, seeking to pull him back in, and he was tempted.

But duty called, “Then you’ll have to sort yourself out.” Viren had to get up and leave before Aaravos pouted him into submission. It shouldn’t be allowed, for anyone to look like that. “I’ll be just a moment,” he called back as he locked himself into the bathroom so he could do his morning ritual in peace. 

When Viren emerged, Aaravos was up and looking somewhat presentable. He slipped into the bathroom while Viren got dressed. It didn’t sound like the kids were up yet, and Soren might even be somewhere else entirely. Soon, they were ready to go. Viren grabbed a cup of coffee to go, and Aaravos accepted one of his own.

On the drive over, Viren brought up something that had been bothering him. “You know, a part of the reason I’ve been so busy is that I have to rebuild bridges between me and Xadia.” He had been talking to elves a lot lately. It wasn’t always pleasant. 

“Because of me,” Aaravos didn’t ask. 

“Because of their general distrust,” Viren tried to soothe. “I’m running out of ways to tell them that you have no say in the decisions I make when it comes to politics, and they keep insisting that I can’t know that.” He hated being talked down to and some of the Xadian people he came in contact with were very good at it. It was almost like they were concerned for him.

“It’s funny how they want to keep me away while being the ones to insist that the king personally deals with me,” Aaravos said, his smile as bitter as the coffee. 

“The whole thing is so convoluted,” Viren agreed. They were nearing Cosmic Vision. “But it’s not the first time it gets like this between us,” he said, referring to Katolis and Xadia. “And I doubt it’ll be the last.” They were neighbors, for better and for worse. He parked the car and received a kiss for his troubles. 

* * *

Aaravos did start coming by in the evenings. It wasn’t every day, because he was busy sometimes too, but most days Viren would let him in before going to bed. He tried to stay up and talk, and some nights he succeeded. It was frustrating to have his attractive partner right there and being too tired to do anything. 

At one point, he handed Aaravos a key to the house without much ceremony. It didn’t have to be a big deal and that way, Aaravos didn’t have to sneak in through the window like a teenager. 

One night, they were sitting at the dinner table, going through some magic texts. Claudia peeked in, curious, before coming over to the table. Viren raised his eyes from what he had been reading. “Yes?”

“Didn’t you promise me some lessons from Aaravos?” she asked, looking over the nearest book. 

“We did talk about that,” Viren remembered now that she brought it up, but with everything else going on, it had slipped his mind.

“How about now?” she asked. It did look like the stage had been set. “He’s here, I’m here, you’re here, it’s a perfect time,” she argued.

Viren looked over at his partner who shrugged.

“It’s fine by me,” Aaravos said. They hadn’t been doing anything important, there were already books on the table, and Viren had to admit that she had a point.

“Alright,” he agreed. “Join us.”

She sat on the opposite side of the table and leaned forward, excited and expectant. Viren realized that he didn’t have anything planned for her.

“I don’t think you should touch this yet,” he said as he closed the book he had been reading and placed it aside. Aaravos dug a tome out of his pile.

“This one,” he said. “I’d categorize this as, let’s say advanced basics.” He handed it to Viren for inspection. It wasn’t one Viren had borrowed before but as he flipping through it, he couldn’t spot anything too unreasonable. Beside him, Aaravos was the picture of innocence when Viren sent him a questioning look.

“Right,” Viren said. He wasn’t surprised.

“I’m so ready,” Claudia enthused. 

The following hour was a lot of Claudia talking about her lessons so far and asking questions about the contents of the book. Viren tried to stay on the sidelines; this was Aaravos’ time and he was good at instructing. It raised some questions about whether he had done it before, and Viren thought that it might be good to pry into his past more. To get some information about what his life had been like before he had been locked away. 

Claudia was a good student, but then Viren already knew that. It would be alright for him to leave them to it, while he sorted out some scheduling conflicts. The hour wasn’t that late. 

Viren excused himself.

When he came back, Claudia had moved to sit next to Aaravos, fiddling with his hair. 

“I think you’d look cute with this section braided here,” she took a part of the hair and held it against another part to demonstrate. 

“Are we done for the day?” Viren asked, staying by the door. He wasn’t an expert on hair and it seemed like something he should stay out of. 

“We’re just taking a break,” Claudia said, already working on the braid. “I’m going to make him look adorable.”

“I don’t think adorable is a word I’d use for him.” He went farther into the room and sat where his daughter had been sitting moments earlier. 

“Then what is?” she asked, glancing up from her work with a smile. It was a look too innocent to actually be innocent. 

Viren raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you fishing for compliments for him?”

“Nooo,” she drew out. “Of course not.” 

“Don’t worry, Claudia,” Aaravos piped up after watching their exchange in silence. “He tells me I’m pretty all the time.” 

“That is correct,” Viren said even while he felt his face growing warm. He didn’t pay attention to how Claudia did her hair, as long as it was presentable, but she looked like she knew what she was doing. 

“That’s sweet,” she said, her eyebrows knitting together while she figured out how to account for the horns. “Now that Aaravos has a key, we can start doing this more, right? The lessons, I mean, but also the hair thing.” 

“I don’t think I ever told you about the key.” Viren had kept it silent, discreet, he thought.

“I have my ways,” she smiled at him. He was so proud, but her nosey tendencies could be better directed somewhere else. 

“I was going to say something, I just didn’t think it needed to be a huge ordeal,” he defended. “But yes, if Aaravos agrees, I don’t see why not.” 

“I’m rather enjoying this,” Aaravos added into the conversation about him happening around him. 

“It’s settled then,” Claudia declared.

* * *

Once his schedule cleared up, he had more time to sit down with Claudia and Aaravos. The lessons took place in the evenings when Aaravos didn’t have other duties to attend to. Claudia continued to be interested and flying through the material. It gave Viren a sense of pride, to see Claudia succeed and to hear Aaravos praise her. 

On one such evening, time got away from them, and by the time they looked up from their books and ingredients, it was late and Soren was there. 

“Are we ever going to use the table for eating again?” he asked, leaning on the doorframe, looking sour. 

“Are you hungry, Soren?” Viren asked, frowning. “We can take a break.” It’d be better if they stopped for the night, but they were on a roll.

“No, nevermind,” Soren said, turning to head upstairs. “I’ll just, turn in I guess.” He left.

“That’s unusual.” As far as Viren remembered, Soren wasn’t one to skip meals. 

“He’s right though, we should eat.” Claudia gathered up some books to get them out of the way. She didn’t look happy, but she put on a brave face. “Give me a hand, dad?” she asked and Viren nodded, even while wondering if he should go after Soren. 

Aaravos, who had been staring after him, returned to the present enough to ask, “Would you like my help as well?” 

“Nah, you’re fine,” she waved him off with a smile. “Just do whatever while we’re over there,” she pointed towards the kitchen and with a last glance towards the stairs, walked away. Viren went to follow. On his way, he saw Aaravos slip out of the dining room and up the stairs. It was peculiar enough for Viren to go after him. 

Claudia reappeared next to Viren and followed him to the stairs. “You shouldn’t just barge in there,” she said, keeping pace.

“I think I should be the one to handle this, whatever it is,” Viren told her. “But you’re right, we need to be careful.” They sneaked upstairs, finding the door to Soren’s room slightly ajar. Claudia hushed him when they reached the door so Viren hushed her back.

“We do not have to be at odds,” Aaravos said, on the other side of the door. Viren peeked in, as careful as he could be.

“We’re not at odds, man. I’m just, feeling a bit left out, I guess,” Soren shrugged, seated on the bed, looking away. “Now everyone in the family is like magic this and magic that, and I’m not about it.”

Stunned silence, Aaravos stood very still and Viren backed away enough that he couldn’t see in anymore. Then he heard, “You consider me a part of the family?”

“Well, yeah? You’re here all the time and dad really cares about you. That counts, right?”

“I… I suppose?”

Viren had never heard Aaravos sound so unsure of himself. In his hiding spot, he leaned heavier on the wall behind him. Claudia covered her mouth. He should have been the one to talk to him about it, not Soren. 

“You suppose? He hasn’t said anything to you?” Soren paused. “Actually, why am I surprised, he’s not the type to say it out loud.”

“He hasn’t expressed it in those exact terms, but your father, he plays his cards close to the chest, so to speak.”

“Yeah, too close,” Soren muttered, just loud enough for Viren to make out. “Not that I’d want him to get all mushy, that’d be weird,” he returned to speaking at normal volume.

“I would also suspect that something was amiss,” Aaravos agreed.

“Like he’s dying or something.” 

They laughed at him for a while. Viren frowned, annoyed, but at least they were getting along, even if it meant that they made fun of his inadequacy as a person with emotions. 

“Look,” Soren said, more somber. “I don’t really want to bring this up with him, so if you could keep it on the down-low, that’d be great.” 

“Why?” Aaravos asked.

“It’s, he has a lot of stuff going on and this isn’t a big deal,” Soren explained. “I don’t need to bother him about it, and when I talked to Claudia, she said I didn’t have anything to worry about and she’s closer to dad, so I guess she’d know, so, yeah.” 

Viren didn’t like the explanation. He didn’t think he was playing favorites, but he did spend a lot of time on Claudia and her magic studies. It didn’t help his case that he had learned about Soren’s issues through spying on a conversation instead of talking to him. But then, if his son didn’t want to talk to him, what was he supposed to do? Force him? It simultaneously made him feel annoyed and grateful that Aaravos was there to handle it, even though it was Viren’s job to deal with the kids. He was the father, and while Aaravos could one day be something like a stepfather, he couldn’t think about it right then. 

Trying harder to fit Soren into his schedule was the easiest solution. Maybe he should let Aaravos talk him into seeing a game. It probably wouldn’t have to be one of Soren’s; he still went to sports events for fun, right? Viren realized that he had no idea. He could ask Claudia, his number one source for Soren related news, or better yet, he could actually talk to his son. 

Aaravos speaking interrupted his thoughts, “I think he might already know, on some level.” 

Viren rolled his eyes. Aaravos definitely knew he was there and this whole thing was at least two levels of shady. 

“You think so?” Soren asked, a strange hopefulness in his tone seeing how he didn’t want his dad to know about his worries. 

“Oh, absolutely,” Aaravos assured him. Viren could hear him smirking. “I think there will be more father-son time in your future.” 

“Ooh, right, you’re like a, a future guy.” 

Aaravos hid his laugh badly with a cough, “A future guy?” So he was polite enough to not laugh in Soren’s face about his awkward word choices, but he couldn’t extend that same courtesy to Viren. He was lucky he was so pretty. “Yes, you could say that,” he went on. “And as a future guy, I can tell you that the next time you ask your father to go with you, he won’t say no. Or,” he paused for dramatic effect, “If he’s brave enough, he might even ask you himself.” 

Aaravos was a talented future guy because he was spot on. 


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, a short chapter (you can think of this as the epilogue). Thank you for reading/commenting/leaving kudos. Thank you thenovicewriter for betaing. Working on this fic was a good time.

The following winter, Viren made good on his promise to take Aaravos to the Royal Library in the Old Castle. The renovations were done and all the books were back from storage. Some of them were sealed in glass cases, like a museum display. The rest had to be handled with care.

They walked between the shelves. It wasn’t tourist season, so they were alone aside from a couple staff members, and the halls were cold, the winter chill pushing in through the walls. The winters weren’t as cold as they were in the northern human kingdoms, but they got snowfall in the darkest time of the year. 

Aaravos and Viren had been together for little over half a year, and Viren was starting to get cautiously optimistic that they would last. They had their vicious fights that in the end weren’t over anything important. The accusations they flung at each other got personal and could cut deep, but they had always managed to smooth the wounds over so far. Neither Claudia nor Soren had witnessed any of their shouting matches. Viren preferred it like that.

In the library, they were at peace. They were bookish people at heart. Viren had stayed over at Aaravos’ the night before; some of his things, clothes, hygiene products, and books had made their way over there. Aaravos had more of his worldly possessions at Viren’s than the other way around, but he hadn’t officially moved in. It was a process. And in any case, it was nice to have a place they could hole up in, just the two of them. 

The cold winter light filtered in through the windows. Aaravos stopped to look at one of the books on display, the light bouncing off his hair in a way that gave Viren pause. He wondered when he’d start finding Aaravos just another face, if it was something that could ever happen.

He cleared his throat. “See something you recognize?” he asked. 

With a glance towards him, Aaravos replied, “The dialect is familiar.” He traced his finger along the glass, above a map sketched on one of the pages. “I remember some of these places, vaguely.” 

Viren looked at where he pointed. “A few of them still exist, under different names.” It was subtle, but when Viren turned his eyes on Aaravos, he saw sadness there. He couldn’t imagine what it was like, to live so out of your time. “Do you ever think about visiting Xadia?” 

“I do think about it,” Aaravos said, moving on to the next display. “I wouldn’t be welcomed and I’m unsure if I want to go.”

“It’s your home.”

Aaravos spun on his heel to face Viren. “I have a new home.” He smiled, fixed the placement of Viren’s scarf, even though there was nothing wrong with it. Viren let him do it without comment, feeling warm.

“Of course,” he managed to say and if his voice had gone a bit breathy, that was between the two of them. “For as long as you like.” For a moment, he thought that Aaravos was about to kiss him, out here in the open where anyone could walk in, but he just felt the press of a forehead against his.

“You’re very sweet,” Aaravos said and pulled back.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been called that before,” Viren replied after a moment of finding his footing again. “Usually it’s anything but.” 

“I wouldn’t call you that every day, but there are moments.” He hadn’t let go and now his warm hands trailed up to the sides of Viren’s face. “Are you cold?” he asked.

Not right then he wasn’t. “It’s a bit chilly in here.” The Old Castle was drafty with walls of stone. “I’ll manage.”

“You should’ve worn a hat.”

Viren rolled his eyes, while secretly appreciating the concern. “You wear a hat.”

“How?”

Aaravos had a point, or several. “I think we got sidetracked,” Viren said. “We were talking about you.”

“Trying to figure out where to fish for more information?” Aaravos asked, astute as ever, but more amused than angry. 

“I wouldn’t feel the need, if you just told me,” Viren argued, his words softened by how Aaravos hadn’t let go of him. He placed his hands on top of Aaravos’ and drew them away from his face, to where he could hold them. 

After a moment of looking at their joined hands, Aaravos spoke, “There isn’t much, here.”

“Tell me a story, then.” Maybe disguising it as something that had barely happened would make it easier. 

“How would you like it to begin?”

Viren pretended to give it some thought, “How about, thousands of years ago…” he trailed off, waited for Aaravos to take over.

Aaravos grinned. “From the beginning, then?” he asked, giving Viren’s hands a squeeze. “When I was young.”

“From the beginning,” Viren confirmed. They had a few hours, and then time after, back home. 


End file.
